A World of Beasts
by Whiggity
Summary: From across time and space, six souls journey through an eternal autumn wood in pursuit of one goal: To undo the apocalypse which brought them together. These are kids who have stared down evil before, but that sort of encounter leaves scars – and in such a strange place as this, old wounds are prone to reopen at the worst of times...
1. The Night the Moon Ate Everybody

**I am beginning to realize that there is some imperative to get this story published as soon as possible, because Gravity Falls is finally coming back tomorrow and I have the strong feeling that we're gonna see some headcanons badly smashed over the next few weeks - meaning that any theories I posit now about the series' endgame are in imminent danger of being outdated. That's what I get for writing about a show still in progress, I suppose.**

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1

The door to the back room creaked open slowly, with a dangerous tremble and matching crumble of wood from the hinges. Dipper Pines squinted at the sliver of light laid across the floor within and dared to push further; the walls seemed to protest, but nothing fell over, and given the sort of luck they'd been having the last few days that was as good as an invitation to come in. The room he stepped into was small and sagging, with dull pinkish light falling through an ancient grimy window and what looked like a hole in the middle of the wooden floor. He could just barely make out the shape of a bedframe by one wall, and something massive – a wardrobe, perhaps? – on another, but aside from that the only contents of the area were splinters and dust motes. He hunched his shoulders and knew not to be disappointed, but was anyway. This was the third house in two days. Still nothing worthwhile.

He retreated to the cobwebbed hall and called out, "Not in here. You having any luck?"

For a minute there was no response. Then, with a thump and a cough, Mabel stumbled out of the dark kitchen doorway and leaned up against the wall, mouth and nose covered by one sweater sleeve. "Nah," she said, voice muffled, waving the thick air in front of her face; Dipper made a concerned move toward her, but she shook her head. "'S just dusty in there," she clarified, and cleared her throat. "I'm fine."

"So, nothing at all?" Dipper asked again, digging his fingers into the spongey doorframe.

"No," she said again, and opened her palms. "But I found some toys, I think. Real old-timey." Dipper stepped forward to examine the figurines in her hands. They were painted wood in simple shapes: a toad, a bird, a person or two. He picked the bird up for closer examination, fancying that something about it – a scent, a style, a copyright year? – could tell him anything, _anything_ at all about this place.

Nothing whatsoever. Outside, the forest was growing leaden with shadow.

Mabel took back the little wooden bird and cleared her throat loudly, which she'd gotten into the habit if doing lately in an attempt to cover the sound of her stomach growling. Dipper wasn't fooled, and gave her a strained look which she deflected with a cheery grin. "You know, even if there's no food here, look on the bright side. We still found a place to stay for the night!" She raised a hand above her head to indicate the peeling cottage around them. In response, the whole thing seemed to moan and slump, and a shiver ran up Dipper's neck.

"Not a chance," said the seventeen-year-old, crossing his arms tightly. Mabel looked hurt that he would dismiss her happy suggestion out of hand, and he added, "Sorry, Mabel, but if even a raccoon runs across the roof in the middle of the night, the whole thing's gonna collapse."

"But it's -" She cast worried eyes around the dingy room. "I mean, it's old, so – it's lasted this long, right? What are the odds it'll collapse… y' know, _tonight?"_ Not even she sounded convinced, so Dipper didn't waste his breath arguing the point. He understood her protests, though; their nights lately had been bad enough that he, too, was almost willing to risk being buried under a half-ton of wood in order to avoid any more exposure to the dark. He shuffled forward with his hands in his pockets. Mabel's good spirits were visibly starting to crack, so he nudged her slightly and did his best to smile. "Hey. At least the clouds cleared up. If we sleep outside, we'll be able to see the stars."

"Yeah. Yeah, you're right." He knew she wasn't reassured by that – neither was he – but it was an illusion they were both willing to feed on the off-chance it would offer some comfort to the other. "And, y' know, there aren't any lights anymore, so we'll be able to see the stars _really_ well. You're right, Dip." In the dimming light, she sought out his hand and squeezed it. "I trust you. I'm sure we'll be fine."

"Yeah," he said weakly.

"Yeah," she repeated again. They both looked out the slanted front door. Evening was almost upon them. They were running out of time.

Slowly, they exited the dilapidated cottage one after the other, into the deep gray woods without. The sky was lightly touched with pink and the darkness beneath the trees was growing. The leaves hushed quietly at their backs as they passed beneath the curling branches.

Above their heads to the east, the moon sat overturned in the sky, halfway to full, for the third night in a row.

–

The shadows were starting to scream again.

Dipper walked close at his sister's side. If he was the one covering the rear, Mabel would be the first to run into any trouble or trap lying in wait ahead; but if he led the way, she was liable to be taken by surprise from behind, possibly before he could help. Neither was a risk he was willing to take, so the twins made their wide path slowly through the trees, keeping always within two paces of one another for greatest security – or at least what passed for that in a situation where they had no food, few weapons, and nowhere safe to sleep.

"If it had just happened _any_ other night," Dipper muttered under his breath for the dozenth time as they walked. Any other damn time at all, he would have been ready for this, or closer to it. He wasn't the sort to be caught unprepared; he, after all, was the one who always ensured that the family car was stocked with clean gauze and Tylenol within date; he who had bought two back-up can openers to store in the basement pantry and studied the _SAS Survival Guide_ like a textbook; he who kept four bug-out bags, labeled _Mom, Dad, Mab.,_ and _Dip.,_ stashed under his bed at all times, _just in case._ In some ways he'd been sure he'd never need to use them; he and Mabel had ended the possibility of global annihilation five years ago, after all. But those little safety nets, scattered here and there, added just the reassurance he'd found himself needing in order to sleep at night. Doomsday was a game he'd played before, and the only way to win was if he and the people he loved managed to live through it.

It was the fact of his usual preparedness that _really_ made their current circumstances sting that much worse, though. Of all the times and places he'd imagined the world could end (and he'd imagined most), the very last he'd ever anticipated was in the middle of the school gymnasium while he was slightly drunk, hitting on a girl from student council, and dressed as a leprechorn. It would be a hell of a story to tell the grandkids someday, but Dipper pulled himself out of rumination when he felt Mabel place a hand on his shoulder.

"Did you hear that?" she asked him. She was trying to keep her voice casual. Trying.

"No," he mumbled, looking this way and that. "I wasn't paying attention." Dull gold still touched the tree trunks above their heads, but the angle grew lower every minute.

"I think it was -" But Mabel didn't have to say, because it sounded again: a high noise, part whistle or cackle or screech, distant but bloodcurdling, and still far too close for comfort. Dipper palmed the handle of the knife on his belt as the sound ran frisson, unbidden, down his spine.

His throat had gone unexpectedly dry. "You're right," he said. "It's them again."

Mabel wrapped her arms tight around her body and took a deep breath. "I really wanted to sleep inside tonight, Dipper," she said, voice small. "I really don't want to do this again."

"I know," he said. "Me neither." He licked his lips and unbuttoned the knife from its canvas sheath, as a reassurance. "You know, if they wanted to hurt us, they've had plenty of chance to do it," he said, trying to keep his tone confident. "This is the third night and we still haven't seen head or tail of… whatever they are. I don't think they want anything to do with us, Mabel." The screaming swelled again temporarily, ululating, as if in laughter. Dipper's stomach dropped, and he swallowed and kicked at the ground, where dry leaves scattered before the blow. The area in which they stood could not fairly be called a clearing so much as a cradle between tree roots, but the ground was relatively flat, and unobstructed enough that they might be able to make a fire again. "Maybe we could just set up camp here," he said, despite his dread. For her sake, he wasn't going to act afraid.

Mabel crouched down so that the back of her green skirt dragged on the hard-packed dirt. She rested her back against a tree trunk and wrapped her arms around her knees, eyes on the branches above their heads. The air was neutrally warm, the leaves of the half-fallen canopy above them a spectrum of yellow through red through brackish brown, all touched with light from the end of the day. A spot of gold fell between the branches and lit up her cheek. She looked indescribably sad. "Mabel?" he said. "Are you okay?"

"Do you think Mom and Dad are dead?" she asked.

A spear of emotion pierced his stomach at the question. "No," he lied without hesitation, and crouched down next to her at the base of the tree, flipping his knife over and over in his hand. "Nah, Mabel. They're… they're just not here."

"But where _is_ here?" she asked, turning to look at him. The sunspot moved from her left cheek to her right ear and limned every flyaway brown hair near her temple. "What the hell happened, Dipper? Where did everybody _go?"_ It was the same question Dipper had been asking himself for two full days, and one for which he had no answer. It was yet another reason for him to be furious with himself over their circumstances; maybe he would have been able to speculate with more with certainty if he'd had his wits about him when the world ended, but the fact was that he had completely failed to notice that anything was even wrong for a full five minutes after the fact.

It was the night of the Senior Spooktacular Halloween Gala, and Dipper had three ounces of liqueur in his system, a sparkly cloth horn and horse ears on his hairband, and the mistaken impression he was getting in good with class treasurer Bonnie Lee. The walls of the gym were draped in orange and white streamers, the lights were low, and the theme banner hanging from the ceiling read "A Bubbling Brew," which several students had independently taken as an invitation to spike the punchbowl, resulting in a beverage hovering somewhere around 120 proof. As far as Dipper was concerned, this was about as good as school dances got.

"Y'know, I saved the world once," he said, not quite slurring his words as he leaned up against the wall at Bonnie's side. She took a bite of the grocery store cookie gingerly pinched between the folds of a paper napkin and squinted at him.

 _"What did you say?"_ she asked loudly.

 _"I said I saved the world once,"_ he yelled over the techno remix of the Monster Mash blaring from the speakers near the ceiling.

 _"Cool,"_ she yelled back, and gave him a little smile which, had he been sober, he would have recognized as more polite than flirtatious, and duly backed off. Instead he grinned widely. _This is going great._

 _"Yeah,"_ he shouted as she started to turn back to her friends on her other side. _"I got possessed by a demon and almost died."_ She wrinkled her nose, but tried to give him a half-interested smile.

 _"I can't imagine what a demon-possessed unicorn would look like,"_ she teased. Dipper was confused for a second until she nodded at his headband.

 _"Oh!"_ he said, reaching up to finger the prop. _"Oh, no, I'm not a unicorn."_ He plucked at his green shamrock t-shirt. _"See, I'm a_ leprechorn."

 _"A what?"_

 _"A leprechorn!"_ He stupidly made hooves with his fists and pawed the air. _"Half magical horse, half angry little man. Very dangerous! Neighh."_ She laughed, almost genuinely this time, a sound that made Dipper suddenly very warm. On a whim, he leaned forward slightly. He wasn't sure what was going to happen. He just knew that he had a good feeling about it.

And then with an electronic buzz and pop, the music died and the lights shut off. A collective groan went up from the students gathered in the gym, along with the sound of yelling and of dozens of bodies stumbling in the dark. Dipper leaned up close to the wall to stay oriented. He just had to wait it out; this would surely be fixed in a couple of minutes. The only source of light was a dull, almost imperceptible blue glow from the small, high windows opposite him.

He found his eyes drawn to them as he spread his arms along the wall, embracing it in his drunken state. The shapes of the windows burned themselves into his retinas in the dark, and flash-danced yellow on the inside of his eyelids every time he blinked. It was mesmerizing. He realized suddenly that he was very tired, and that Bonnie no longer seemed to be standing at his side. She'd taken her first chance to escape. Of course she had. What was he thinking? Stupid, stupid, stupid.

These thoughts were deep and distracting enough that it took Dipper quite a while to realize that the gym had gotten very silent. As his eyes accustomed to the dark, he saw the dim light glinting off the shiny gym floor, and realized that it was pretty weird he could see so much of the floor, and so little of any people on it. He turned to his right to see if anyone had joined him by the wall for safety. No one. Hesitantly he took a step out, arms extended outward, feeling for another body.

His sneaker hit the floor abruptly, and squeaked. The sound echoed across the walls. His blood ran cold and he started walking faster.

There was no one here. The gym was completely empty.

Had he blacked out? Had they evacuated for the power outage and he'd somehow failed to notice everyone leaving? Even the exit sign above the door on the east wall was dead. That wasn't supposed to happen. In his panic he lurched forward into the plastic table holding the punchbowl, and sent it toppling over while he yelled in pain. Overpoweringly hard punch spread across the floor, and he slipped in it when he tried to continue forward. Another shout echoed between the rafters.

Finally he stumbled to his feet, sopping wet and smelling of Southern Comfort, and made it to the east wall, feeling desperately for the doors. When he finally shoved them open, no alarm sounded as the signs posted on them threatened. He took a few steps further and collapsed on the soccer field, head spinning.

It was completely silent, and completely dark. No traffic, no city glow, not a single voice. Everybody was gone. He'd been left behind. But something else was missing, too. Something really important –

"Mabel," he whispered. His head snapped up suddenly toward the pitch-black field. He screamed, _"MABEL!"_ and his voice echoed limply off the goalposts and bleachers. Despair filled him. Why would he expect her to be out here anyway, she could be anywhere at all, he was such an idiot –

And then against all odds, he heard the responding _"Dipper!"_ screamed from a far distance, and turned to see his sister running toward him along the school track, with a pair of cat ears in her hand and tears in her eyes.

"…Dipper?"

Back in the present, he raised his gaze, unaware he'd drifted so far away. Mabel was looking at him, hands still clutching her knees, sunspot still lighting up her unbrushed hair. Far away, a crow was quorking loudly. "Sorry," he said, rubbing one eye with his palm. "Got thinking."

"You never do that," she joked, elbowing him gently in the ribs. He smiled a little, but let it fade away again.

"Mabel," he asked after a minute. "What was it you said to me when we met up outside of the gym on Halloween?"

"After the…?" He nodded. She raised an eyebrow in thought and turned a little red. "I think I said the moon ate everybody."

"Yeah. That was it." _The moon ate everybody,_ she'd sobbed incoherently as she stumbled up to him in her black dress and whiskery makeup, and he'd said, _No, no, the lights just went out, Mabel, we've gotta find where everyone went –_

But he was wrong. The lights hadn't just gone out. The stars had too, as well as the moon, which, as Mabel described tearily after her panic wore out, had suddenly grown to thrice its normal size in the sky and seemed to stare at her before disappearing altogether, along with the group of friends she'd been sitting with out on the green. One second they were there and the next they'd gone, just as had happened in the gym. Dipper didn't know what to say to that.

When they turned together back to the school, it was to find it dilapidated and mossy, as if it had been abandoned for fifty years.

It, and the rest of the school campus, was nearly completely grown over by ancient trees.

So it was that even the best-laid plans are laid to waste. They were able to scrounge a random few items of clothing from the suddenly-grown-over remains of Dipper's gross car, including Mabel's once-thought-lost teapot sweater, but all of the important things – the MREs and satellite phones and flashlights and water purification tablets and sleeping bags and sutures – were at home, and home, as it turned out, didn't really exist anymore. Dipper and Mabel walked for half an hour through the streets of Piedmont, which grew thicker and thicker with the depths of the forest with each step, and arrived at their house to find it halfway collapsed and completely empty. They screamed for their parents, tried to dig through the rotten wood and gray insulation, kicked at the walls that were still standing, and finally collapsed together on the front doorstep, keeping close to one another with sore throats and the deepening suspicion that they might be the last two people on Earth.

They cried, a little. No shame in that. But they were the Mystery Twins, or at least they used to be, and despair was never going to hobble them for long. So sitting on the dusty stoop of their childhood home in the darkness of a void, they made their plans.

When they looked back up again, the moon was back to sitting there above them as if it had never left, laying innocently upside-down in the sky like the punchbowl on the gym floor.

At the base of the tree, Dipper hitched up the backpack on his shoulders. Piedmont had deteriorated rapidly after that, but they were able to salvage a few key items from half-rotten storefronts and homes: spare clothes, thin blankets, a compass, a camping knife, an old barbecue lighter, and a pack for each of them. They had no food, and by morning the city was all but gone to the encroaching forest, but they still had each other, and they had a goal: They were going to go back up to Oregon.

After all, no matter how frightening and bizarre this all was, they had a pretty good idea from whence the problem had come, and where they needed to be in order to fix it.

As if she could read his mind, Mabel murmured, "Everything about this really sucks, but… I'm glad it's made you willing to see Grunkle Stan again."

Dipper rubbed his thumb along the hilt of the knife, still turning it over and over in his hand. "If he's even there," he said. "He might be missing too, Mabel. Probably is."

"Well, all three of us are kind of Persons of Interest where weird paranormal kablooie is concerned," she said, waving her hands around for emphasis. "And you and I are still here, so maybe Stan is…" She let the idea peter out with a shrug. A little frown creased her brow. "I really hope so."

Dipper wanted to hope the same, but it was difficult when it conflicted so sharply with his commitment to never speaking to Stan again. He'd stood by it for five years now despite all pressure from his sister, and was quite proud of that. "Yeah, well," he said, changing the subject and finally moving to stand again. "We're not gonna find out till we get there, and we have a pretty long time before that happens, so… No point dwelling on it." Mabel gave him a worried look, but didn't press the subject. While Dipper set to gathering wood for kindling, she pulled out her phone and turned it on. They limited themselves to one signal check each day, unless they had a good reason to do it more often; turning a phone on and off over and over is hell on the battery. After two days, Mabel still had a little more than half power, while Dipper was in the lower quarter. "Any luck?" he asked, already knowing the answer.

She confirmed it with a depressed, "No." Her phone shut down again with a twinkle and she stood up to help.

They had the fire built before the sun went down, and sat huddled close to it while they watched the last light disappear from the sky above the treetops. Closer than before, the inhuman screams started up again, twisting between the trees like grasping hands. Dipper tensed, and Mabel shivered and bounced her feet restlessly with the blanket around her shoulders.

"I reeeally hate this," she said, voice tight.

"They won't hurt us," Dipper said, but he was just as nervous as she. They – whatever they were – had never gotten this close before. Their cries continually came and went, fading into the forest before returning with a vengeance and then moving away again. It was almost intolerable. It wasn't enough that they were alone in the woods and scared, without food or supplies; it wasn't enough that they were reduced to scavenging to survive in the strange old homes that popped up here and there between the trees, like witches' cottages in fairy tales; it wasn't even enough that they were trekking through an apocalypse which they by all rights should have averted years ago, and never had to think back on again.

No. They also had to deal with being stalked each night by whistles and screams that made them afraid to spread a toe too far from the firelight, seeming perfectly timed to startle them from sleep whenever they started to doze. This was the third night in a row that they would spend feeling like they were surrounded by carrion animals waiting for the moment to pounce.

And to make things even worse, this was the first night where Dipper also had the feeling that he was being _watched._

The screaming from the woods was in one of its lulls the first time he thought he saw movement out of the corner of his eye, but it was gone before he could look. He told himself it was nothing. Then, as Mabel hunkered down in her blanket, eyes drooping closed, Dipper felt a creep fall down his neck and instinctively glanced up past her head, to one of the trees just beyond the ring of their firelight, perhaps twenty feet away.

There it was again. A hurried movement, and the whisk of loose fabric disappearing behind the trunk. His shoulders went tense with fear, but he swallowed and said, as quietly as he could, "Mabel."

She didn't respond at first. "Mabel," he said again, no louder, and her eyes finally opened.

"Mm?" she asked, blinking tiredly at the fire.

"I need you to wake up, Mabel." Her brow creased and she started to look around but he said, "No. Don't move. Don't look now. Someone's following us." Her eyes widened, but she stayed still.

"Who?" she breathed. "A person?"

His heart thrummed at the possibility. "I don't know. But I don't appreciate being stalked in the dark, you know? No matter who's doing it." He glanced back at the tree, just for a second. Nothing moved. "You wanna find out who this creep is and teach him something about messing with the Pines family?"

Slyly, Mabel grinned. He knew that she would.

They formulated a crude plan in mostly pantomime, and then Mabel stood up with an exaggerated stretch. "Man, I _really_ gotta pee," she said, loudly enough that Dipper struggled not to roll his eyes. "Be right back, Dip." She tromped off into the trees to her left while Dipper kept his gaze nominally on the fire. Mabel had some advantages over him, being lighter and sneakier than he could manage, and she could provide the distraction that would let him apprehend the guy. Thing. Whatever it was. It didn't matter. It was about to be in big trouble.

His cue came with a shrill "HEY! You looking for us?!" called from two dozen feet into the woods. He saw Mabel jump out from behind her own tree, gesturing wildly in the air before his view was obstructed as she moved. "Hey, creep! Yeah, that's right, I'm over here now!"

Dipper thought he heard a second voice in response to that, but didn't take the time to listen. He was already up and running.

He dashed behind the nearest tree and then the next, eyes intent on the one he knew was hiding his quarry. As he came up behind it, Mabel growled, _"Fight me, guy."_ Finally, Dipper could see the bastard from behind. Just the shape of someone, tall, thin, male, wearing what looked like a cape. Mabel was barely visible over his shoulder, jumping around crazily and brandishing her fists. "Fight me! Come on, I dare you."

The guy started to say, "I don't want to fi –"

But Dipper was already on him. "That's great to hear, dude," he grunted as he snagged a handful of the stranger's cape and pulled him backward, eliciting a small choked noise. "Let's talk instead." He swung the man around, realizing only too late that his trajectory happened to include a particularly large tree. The side of the stranger's head bashed against the trunk with more force than Dipper had intended, and he slumped down to the ground with a groan of pain. Dipper felt bad, but not enough that he didn't take the opportunity to straddle him across the legs, bundling a handful of cape in one fist and using the other to brandish his knife.

There was a second, before he spoke, when the man raised his face into the dim firelight and Dipper realized that he wasn't really a man at all, but a kid just about his own age. He had around eight inches on him, a beak of a nose, a trickle of blood running down his temple, and a very scared expression, but that was hardly a spark in the face of Dipper's own fear for himself and his sister. He adjusted his grip on the knife in his right hand.

The stranger saw him do so, and stuttered, "J-Jesus _Christ."_

"I have no idea who you are," Dipper panted, tugging the cape upward to pull its wearer with it, "but why the _hell_ are you following us?"

The kid's eyes went wide. "F-following you?" he gasped incredulously. "N-no, we – we –"

Whatever he would have said, it was interrupted by two screams. The first was Mabel's. "Dipper!" she cried, and he turned his face up. "Look out!"

The second shout came from his other side, a furious bellow that he didn't understand at all: _"Wirt!"_ What on Earth did that mean? It wasn't even a word. He turned away from his sister to the source of the noise. Sprinting between the trees toward him were two shapes. One had a skull for a face, and carried itself as if holding a gun. The other was tall, violently auburn, and brandishing a wooden baseball bat. For just a second, he couldn't believe his eyes.

"Wendy?" he asked, without realizing what he'd said.

"Wendy _this,"_ grunted the girl who, it seemed obvious now, was not Wendy at all, as she swung the baseball bat toward his head.

He tried to duck, but not quickly enough. The last thing Dipper saw before his vision went white with pain was Mabel leaping toward him over tree roots, eyes wide and mouth screaming, and then he fell.

* * *

 **My editor-slash-SO tells me my stories aren't attractive because they're not high-conflict enough. OKAY FINE, WELL HOW ABOUT I STARVE DIPPER AND MABEL HALF TO DEATH AND THEN GIVE WIRT A CONCUSSION! IS THAT HIGH CONFLICT ENOUGH FOR YOU? BET YOU FEEL GOOD ABOUT YOURSELF NOW, ASSHOLE! (jk bae i still luv u)**

 **Or in other words: "Children fighting! I can sell this!"**

 **If this intro gave you feelings (joy, concern, disgust, confusion, overwhelming arousal, you know, whatevs) be sure to pop down to the comments and tell me about it! And take a minute to check out my Tumblr at whiggitymacabee. tumblr. com, where I like to chill and meet new people. Send me a message!**


	2. Getting Off On the Wrong Foot

2

As he lay on the ground, limbs splayed, head splitting, with a trickle of blood in his eye and a man with a knife on top of him, Wirt only had one thought at first, shadowed by an inarticulate expression of overwhelming exhaustion and grief: It wasn't supposed to _be_ this way. This couldn't be the Unknown that he'd spent three years revisiting in his dreams. Maybe time had offered him rose-tinted glasses, but the woods he remembered had been softer than this, golden and quiet, gladed and calm, and the beasts lurking in the shadows had been monsters only of the mind. They sung and stalked, but they did not touch – and they had never made him _bleed._ With vision blurred by pain and shock he halfway glimpsed the face of the moon through the deep canopy above him, an old familiar consort turned stranger.

Was it preposterous of him to feel betrayed?

The man above him steadied the knife in his hand, and Wirt choked out an unsteady "J-Jesus _Christ."_ Scrambled as he was, he maintained the grim possibility that this might be the end. He might actually _die._ Lord, just let Beatrice and Sara get Greg out of here in time –

"I don't know who you are," the man with the knife hissed, "but why the _hell_ are you following us?"

The absurdity of the question was almost enough to let Wirt's incredulity overcome his confusion for an instant, even if his tongue wasn't fast enough to follow. "F-following you?" he stuttered. "N-no, we – we –" In fear, he saw the man adjust his grip on the knife again, felt him pull up tighter on his cape. His head throbbed and warped the world with it; his stomach swam with bilious ice. He squeezed his eyes shut, wondering vividly what it was going to feel like to be stabbed –

And then a voice cried out something that sounded like _"Dipper!"_ at the same time that he heard his own name called, and there were footfalls, and a whisper, and a grunt, and a crack.

The grip on his cape loosened, and Wirt opened his eyes just in time for the man to collapse on top of him, a weight which violently expelled the air from his lungs and pulled with it a black void encroaching behind his vision.

In that instant of confused, airless darkness immediately after the fall, his awareness spiraled indecisively between the blooming agony in his skull and the crushing pressure that threatened to drive him straight into the black earth. He was loosely aware that to fall into unconsciousness would be an unwise decision, but between the smothering gravity above him and likely cranial trauma within, the decision was not entirely his to make. Images flashed madly through his mind, spastic light and absurd noise. He was descending into a hole bored into the past as seen through his own eyes, settling in front of his recollection like a well-read book. It was almost like being there again. He didn't mind. It was a comforting moment to relive, the last point of normalcy in recent memory now.

It was Halloween night again, the moon was dazzlingly full, and his biggest worry in the world was of experiencing an awkward moment with his ex-girlfriend.

 _The sun had long since set, but conversation carried on happily into the chill evening as the first trick-or-treaters began to materialize on the sidewalks. Wirt and Sara stood chatting, laughing, on the front porch of his house. The light by the front door caught her shiny black hair and spilled incandescent across the lawn beyond where they stood, leaning on opposing roof supports, close enough to touch but pointedly not; it was the first time they'd talked –_ really _talked – since the breakup in August, and Wirt hadn't realized until now just how much he'd missed it. The distance which had ended their relationship and separated them for the last three months seemed to dissolve the longer they spoke; he raised his eyes to the sky over the neighbors' houses, clear and chilly, while Sara snuggled down inside her bomber jacket, an old familiar gesture which made him feel strangely comforted. "It's been great to see you again," he admitted. She looked up. "I'm, uh… It's nice that we could both be back in town for the holiday." She smiled._

 _"I wouldn't miss it," she said, stuffing her hands into her pockets with a little shiver. She, too, turned her head to look up at the sky and the big bright moon. "Feels kind of special tonight, don't you think? And look at us. It's like That Night all over again." She grinned through the skeletal paint splashed across her face and leaned in to tug on his cloak. "You gave in this year."_

 _"Yeah, I guess I did," he said, taking up a handful of the heavy wool cloak around his shoulders, blue outside and lined with red. Every Halloween since the one spent on the other side of the cemetery wall, Greg had tried to wheedle him into wearing the old costume again. He'd always refused out of a superstitious instinct that to allow the stars of that fateful night to realign would be to invite disaster, but it had been three full years now; he couldn't live in anticipation of the Unknown forever. "Greg was so excited I'd be able to come home from school for Halloween that I just, uh… And I didn't have a costume ready anyway, so, yeah." He still wouldn't wear the hat, though. It might have been going a little far to say he'd developed actual dignity since he was fifteen, but sometimes he liked to pretend._

 _As his fingers lingered on the cloak's brassy buttons, Sara gave a surprised little "Hnn!" from across the porch. A cloud had just come rolling in over the moon so quickly that it had as good as vanished, and he couldn't help the little creep that ran up his spine at the new darkness. He wasn't frightened of storms, but to think of one moving in so suddenly was a little unnerving. He hoped Greg would be back from trick-or-treating soon. As he thought those words, the porch light by the door sputtered and died suddenly with a small zip. With no light and no moon, Sara was little more than a mass of darkness across from him, distinct from the rest of the gloom only by density. She laughed, and said it was clearly a sign she was supposed to finally let him go to spend the rest of the holiday with his family._

 _"Yeah. I mean, you're right, and I will. I was just…" He cleared his throat. "I-it's been nice talking to you." He smiled at her, even though he knew she couldn't see it._

 _"Yeah. You too, Wirt." Her voice was strangely tender. "I missed this. We should start writing letters or something." She paused. "Do you think something happened?"_

 _He turned to look down the street; every light in the neighborhood had been extinguished. "Like someone hit a telephone pole?"_

 _"I don't know." He saw her outline turn and lean out over the porch rail. "Isn't it kind of quiet? It just turned pitch-black on Halloween night. Kids should be crazy about that." She was right. Listening closer, it wasn't just a lack of children's noises; there was no hint of traffic, either, or of barking dogs, or of the Johnsons' television, which normally blared talk shows to the entire street fourteen hours a day. A prickle ran down his neck and he stood up straight._

 _"I should find Greg," he said. As his eyes adjusted to the black, he could make out the light texture of the clouds above, and the shapes of every house in the neighborhood. Nothing moved but the two of them. "Mom said he'd be out with friends tonight. So he could be…" He swallowed. "Pretty much anywhere."_

 _"Want me to come with you?" Sara asked._

Yes, _he thought. "If you want," he said timidly. She came along. The teenagers set off down the empty street together as the moon slowly rematerialized in the sky above them. It had been cut in half during its absence, sitting not full as before, but waxing gibbous in a bed of clouds._

 _It took a long time for either of them to notice._

Scraps of the vivid memory still clung to cognizance as finally, unexpectedly, the crushing mass of the man atop Wirt's chest was pulled away, and he gasped for air as his vision came flooding back into focus. The real world was a scene of chaos. Dazedly, he scrambled the rest of the way out from underneath the stranger's limp weight as Beatrice stood above him with a grimace on her face and her baseball bat held high to swing.

"Don't!" cried a voice at his left. Wirt blinked rapidly, trying to clear his vision. The girl who had first ambushed him in the dark had fallen to her knees and gathered the knife-wielding stranger up in her arms as she tried to drag him away. "Don't hurt him! Please, _please_ –" She took a deep and shuddering breath, looking Beatrice straight on as the man groaned in her arms. "He's all I've got left," she said, red-eyed. "Please, don't."

Beatrice looked incensed by the display. "You should have thought about that before you _attacked him,"_ she said, pointing her bat at Wirt, who was leaning heavily on a tree in an attempt to regain his footing. At a point, he realized that it was a useless endeavor, and slumped back down. His head thudded like a marching beat, and the blood that had been getting in his eyes before had migrated down to his lips. He spat at the acrid taste.

The man groaned again and opened one eye with a hand pressed to the back of his head. He looked almost as bad as Wirt felt. "You were _stalking us,"_ he grunted, scowling in pain. Wirt's vision might have been foggy, but in this new position, limp and weakened on the ground, the strange man suddenly didn't seem so terribly threatening – just some stocky teenager with unkempt hair and a weak soul patch. He'd looked much bigger when he was on top of him.

"We needed to see who made the fire," Beatrice growled.

"And you thought you should act like a fucking Hide-Behind to do it?!"

The shouting pounded in his muddled skull. Wirt placed his temples in his hands while the ground between his feet spun. Even now, he could see them, the colors and shapes of the sky and the city vista on Halloween night, the impact of hometown pavement through his shoes and the sound of Sara's breath at his elbow. It was almost visceral; half of his conscious perception was still standing in the past.

 _Everywhere they went, the lights were down and the streets were empty. Greg was not at the elementary school playground, nor visiting the Daniels' eerily empty home, and he was nowhere to be found in the small ravine behind the (dark, closed) corner store where he liked to play Secret Fort with his friends. Wirt's heart was in his throat as Sara crawled back up the embankment, shaking her head that Greg was not within. He couldn't lose the encroaching feeling that something had gone very, very wrong._ _An owl cooed from far away, and the sound chilled him to the bone. Perhaps it was a distortion of the dark, but it looked like the trees around town were growing taller the further on they walked, standing in places he was sure they hadn't ever before. Their branches curled outward like beckoning hands. Some of them looked, perhaps, to have faces._

 _"Sara, I… I think we should check the cemetery."_

In the deep of the twilight woods, a voice cried out, "Just _stop!"_ and everyone's attention was drawn to Sara, moving in from the side with her gun low, but drawn. She looked frightened out of her wits, but her hands were steady. "Shut _up,"_ she said, tone somewhere between a sob and a hiss. "Everyone stop arguing!"

Everyone did. The strange boy and girl straightened themselves to a sitting position on the ground and slowly raised their hands, as if in surrender. Sara swallowed. "Okay, you don't have to do that," she muttered, pulling back a little, "we all just need to – to calm down, and then we're going to –"

 _"The cemetery?" she asked. "Why would he be in the cemetery?"_

 _Wirt tried to think of a good way to answer that. "You know how Greg is," was the best line he could come up with. "Just a weird kid." A lie by omission._

 _Sara's white face paint glowed under the moon's half-light. "Wirt," she said, reaching for his shoulder, hesitantly, as if afraid he would shake her away. "This is… I mean, it's Halloween night, tonight." Her eyes were wide. "It's Halloween night and that means – This couldn't actually be…?" There was a breath caught underneath her words, ready, hopeful, to blow the prospect away at any moment. He knew what she was asking, but he didn't have an answer for her. Their fears were nestled in the crooked branches of the trees above._

And then Sara, too, was interrupted with a little cry of "Wirt!" as Greg too came dashing out of the dark to embrace his brother, saucepan on his head clanging with each footfall. The frog in his shirt croaked as their bodies collided, and Wirt groaned aloud and held his pounding head. "Are you okay?" Greg asked. Wirt gave a mute nod. "Good! But I know you're lying, because you look terrible." Despite the pain in his skull and his despair worn like a scarf, Wirt actually laughed at that. He could barely focus well enough to look at his brother, but the strangers on the ground seemed to exchange glances. Greg said, "Sara put me behind a tree. I couldn't see." The child's eyes were big as saucers as he placed a hand on his brother's face. "What happened to you, Wirt?" Wirt couldn't answer that question; he couldn't rightfully think straight.

 _The gates of the Eternal Garden were utterly run over. Wild tendrils of woody vine climbed the stone walls, festooned with the dried remains of red leaves and golden flowers. The interior of the graveyard looked like the depths of a forest, with lush maple and hemlock standing high above the walls to block their view of the starry sky. Enormous roots snaked out between the wrought-iron bars, and Wirt and Sara stopped clear in their tracks as the mangled horizon materialized before them. "Oh my God," Sara said, voice tight. "Wirt, how…?" The rest of the question was laid aside by shock. He didn't know the answer; he had a few ideas, but none he felt brave enough to acknowledge out loud._

A wave of nausea hit him as he remembered being swung around by the collar, the white light that exploded behind his right eye when he hit the trunk. Soundlessly, he put his face in his hands, trying to steady himself. "Wirt?" Greg said again, sounding a little scared. Should he be scared? No, he was fine. He just needed everybody to be quiet so he could get his bearings.

The memory of Sara's frightened face was stickered across his mind's eye, and it swirled like a vortex, pulling him inward. Greg jumped away from his lap. Beatrice cried, "Wirt!" and he couldn't say anything to her in response, though he wanted to. _Beatrice._ He thought her name foggily, to remind himself of the fact of her, and her visage replaced Sara's in his head, swimming even more heavily.

 _He sprinted through the cemetery, crying out for his little brother, wanting to know that he, too, had not disappeared into the void of this strange half-world. He heard a bullfrog croak, and when he followed the sound ran straight into a tombstone hiding in the shadows. As he stood bowed over the offending marker, pain in his knees, he couldn't help cursing under his breath, but looked up when he heard a small sound. Greg was crouched on the other side in his ridiculous costume, with a huge bag of candy in one hand and Jason Funderburker in the other. It was a bona-fide miracle. He scrambled toward his brother, not sure whether to hug or berate him, stammering that if Greg wanted to come here tonight, he should have asked, he just had to ask –_

 _Greg wasn't alone, though. He was talking to someone. Curled at the base of a gravestone sat a wild-eyed girl, rocking back and forth in her nightgown. Her legs were long and her nose was sharp, her hair the color of maple leaves, riotously red even in the stark moonlight. Sara came up behind him, but he couldn't pay attention to her. He couldn't even breathe._ _The girl's freckled hands clutched the front of her thin dress, dappled with pine needles and flecks of moss. It was almost the same scene as the first and last time he'd seen her._

 _Since the night he clipped her wings, she hadn't changed at all._

Someone was calling his name again. "Wirt. Wirt!" He felt peculiarly weightless. Beatrice's speckled face swam before him, and then it was Greg's. The child's heartbroken expression stirred something in his confused mind. He reached out to take his brother's hand but never found it.

 _Even in the midst of all this madness, this was what seemed truly impossible. Maybe by some insanity he could have excused the silence, embraced the darkness, forgotten the trees that had overtaken his childhood home – but this represented a passage which should have been as impenetrable as the borders between present and past. That was the one thing he'd known, three years back, before he picked up Greg to carry him back home: They would not see each other again._

("Goodbye, Beatrice.") ("Goodbye, Wirt.")

 _But in that moment he heard himself saying it once more: "…Beatrice?"_

The memories were so vivid that the real world had become surprisingly dark in the interim. "Oh, shit. No, no, no," said someone, "I think he's concussed." He tried to tell them not to curse in front of Greg, but was much too tired. His shoulder hit something hard. The ground. He was sideways; it seemed as good a way to be as any. Briefly he opened his eyes and what he saw was the two strangers among them, the boy and girl, sitting on the ground just a few feet away and staring back at him with nearly identical brown eyes. They didn't look menacing. They looked scared, not unlike his little brother. He wanted to tell them they didn't have to be. He was fine. He just needed to rest.

Then the world went black, and he closed his eyes to a final recollection of gravestones in the Garden, standing in between hickory and birch as dark and silent as funeral-goers in the night, mourning the loss of his certainty that the world was as solid and immutable as he'd started to let himself believe again.

–

Unconsciousness was deep and dark and wonderful; Wirt truly couldn't remember the last time he'd rested so soundly, not just since this whole mess began, but even in his own bed. He floated content in a warm abyss, cushioned in all ways, wanting for nothing, and dreamed that he was back to wandering the Unknown with Greg and Beatrice as a bird, striding side-by-side through the quiet immensity of the forest together. Then someone pulled on his arm, and he frowned. They wrenched his head around and pried open his eyes; he did his best to ignore it, but they were saying his name over and over again. "Wirt! Wirt!" Then a brilliant light pierced his vision to drag him abruptly from unconsciousness, and as if on cue, all the pain he'd almost forgotten about came flowing right back in. He moaned, and raised a hand in front of his eye, where someone was shining a penlight. His skull felt as though it were spiderwebbed with cracks, fraglie at the seams.

"There. He's not dead, see?" said an unfamiliar voice. The penlight was pulled away and Wirt blinked at the spots in his vision. Wiggly dry tree branches spiraled madly above him against the deep blue sky, limned in golden firelight. A stranger was straddling him across the lap, halfway turned around to look at someone over his shoulder. Wirt squinted. It was the kid who'd attacked him, and that realization made him start.

He blustered, "W-hhat the hell?" and struggled to pull himself away.

The stranger looked back again, frowning. "Don't get too excited," he deadpanned as he stood up. "Your crazy friend with the bat said she'd beat my head in if you died."

"My name is _Beatrice,"_ Beatrice said hotly from where she stood, leaning against a tree trunk. "Smart-ass."

Slowly, painfully, Wirt made to sit up and collect his bearings. Despite the pounding in his head, he felt surprisingly lucid. Looking back, he could clearly remember being accosted, and he remembered blacking out, maybe more than once, but everything else was already a mushy blur of color and noise. He reached tenderly for the side of his head. There were flakes of blood in his hair; he must have looked a mess. He'd been moved since his last recollection, and was now propped up against the trunk of a tree next to a low-burning fire. For some reason, his left cheek stung, so that was also new. "How… how long was I out for?" he asked no one in particular. His tongue felt slower than usual and his voice was croaky.

"Ten minutes." It was Sara's voice this time, somewhere behind him. He didn't feel quite steady enough to turn his head that far. "Are you sure he's –?" She was interrupted by an audible scuffle, and Greg came careening into Wirt's field of vision. He sat down by his big brother's arm and wrapped himself around it protectively, saying nothing. Wirt smiled at him and slumped back down, letting his eyes drift closed. He wished he was back asleep. "Is he alright?" Sara finished.

"I don't know," said the stranger's voice again. He sounded unhappy, to say the least. "But he's awake now, so there you go."

"He fell asleep." Beatrice this time. "You aren't supposed to fall asleep after you hit your head. Does that mean he could be –?"

"You shouldn't sleep on a concussion for diagnostic purposes. That's all," said the male voice again. "Look, even if he's _dying_ right now, there's nothing I can do about it. I'm not a doctor."

"You said you knew first aid."

"I can't perform brain surgery!"

Beatrice said, "You better be ready to learn _real quick –"_

"Guys, guys!" A new voice joined the fray, high pitched and distinctly nasal. Wirt peeked underneath an eyelid. It was the girl who had jumped at him and tried to get him to fight her. Seeing her face clearly for the first time, she had chubby cheeks and earnest eyes, and a sweater with a teapot on. "Look, let's not argue!" She stepped between Beatrice and the stranger neatly, pigeon-toed with her hands out in a placating fashion. "I know, I know what you're thinking. This has all gotten kiiinda ugly, yes. We're all scared and hungry and lost in the woods, yes. And we all jumped out and tried to inflict head trauma on one other – also a yes. Big yes." She paused. "But that's all part of getting off on the wrong foot. And the best part of getting off on the wrong foot is that when you finally get your _right_ foot put out, you can appreciate how good it feels!" She hitched up her own right foot to point at it, smiling all around. Neither Beatrice nor the stranger reciprocated.

"She's right." It was Sara's voice again, and finally she stepped up into the firelight where Wirt could see her. Her pistol was back on her belt and her face looked menacing through her cracked skull makeup, though it would have had a much stronger effect if she'd had more than 5'2" to work with. "We're all really jumpy, but nobody's hurt that badly. I mean, probably. Right?" She glanced at Wirt and he opened his eyes fully to acknowledge her, focusing as best he could.

"Wirt's _fantastic,"_ Greg said with much more proud assurance than Wirt himself felt.

"Thanks, Greg," Wirt rasped, holding up a hand to slow him down. "I guess being alive is fantastic enough right now." Truthfully, though, he felt like death. He struggled to sit up a little more and shook his brother off of his arm so that he could rub his head. "I was out for ten minutes?" He couldn't tell if that felt far too long or not like nearly enough time. "What… what happened?" He squinted at Sara, trying to look critical, but most likely, he just looked affected.

"Beatrice slapped you," Greg offered helpfully. That explained why his cheek hurt, then.

"Which one should _not_ do to someone who's hit their head, by the way," the stranger shot from the background.

Beatrice said, "It's _coercive consciousness techniques,"_ crossing her arms with the bat steadfast in her grasp. "Don't question my methods."

"Come on now," Sara said firmly, trying to end the argument before it started. "No more fighting. Wirt's already gotten hurt, and we're just lucky it's not worse, so –"

"You think he's the only one who got hurt, here?" the stranger interrupted, sounding incredulous and pointing at the back of his own skull, which Wirt found a little bit satisfying. He wasn't usually an eye-for-an-eye sort of guy, but his head _really_ hurt.

Sara stood her ground, though. "We don't improve our chances of survival out here by starting vendettas and nursing wounds," she said resolutely. The girl in the sweater nodded; Beatrice and the stranger frowned at one another. "There are other things in these woods that deserve a lot more of our worry than each other."

"How are we supposed to know _you're_ not one of those 'other things'?" asked the stranger.

"Dipper, come on," said the girl with the sweater. "They have a little kid with them."

"You don't even know if that _is_ a kid, Mabel," he said, with a scowl aimed at Greg. "It could be anything."

Wirt bristled at the implication. "He's my brother," he said, trying to ignore the spin in his vision as he sat up, "and he's not an _it."_

"Well, I'm _her_ brother," said the boy called Dipper, heat rising in his tone, "and _I'm_ trying to keep us both alive out here while complete strangers sneak up on us in the dead of night, so _forgive_ me if I'm a little skeptical about you being some innocents just out taking a walk in the – the…"

Before he could finish speaking a ghostly wail rose up again in the woods behind them. Wirt blanched. He imagined he could actually see a shape out there, lurking just beyond the light, deerlike and black. He wrapped an arm around Greg's shoulders, and Beatrice lifted her bat, eyes wide. The thing cackled again and then let its voice fade away before moving rapidly around them to the north, while a dozen new voices joined in. They whistled and creaked, and the sibling strangers stepped closer to one another while Sara put her back to the campfire, hand back on the gun.

"I'm not going back out into the dark again tonight," Beatrice said, voice tight. She pointed an accusing finger at the brother and sister duo with the hand holding the bat. "I _will_ fight someone for this fire."

"No fighting!" the girl called Mabel said, raising her hands once again. "No fighting at all! We can all stay here! Nooot a problem."

 _"We?"_ her brother asked, eyeing Wirt and company.

A flash of annoyance crossed her face. "Yeah, Dipper," she said, turning to him with her hands on her hips. _"We_. There, now the invitation is officially extended." She sent the rest of them a concerned glance, and with visible effort transformed it into a confident smile.

Sara spoke up as well, her voice calmingly low and even. "We – we can make it worth your while," she suggested, hands up as if she were the one offering a surrender now. "We have some supplies. A little water. We can share."

Mabel's eyes widened when she heard that, but Dipper said, "Supplies won't do us any good if we have our _throats slit_ in the middle of the night –"

"Oh, please." Beatrice rolled her eyes mightily. "We don't even have _knives."_

 _"Beatrice you are not helping,"_ Sara hissed out of the corner of her mouth without turning to look at her. "Look, this is all – this whole fight is one big, horrible misunderstanding." She paused and tried to offer a friendly grin to the siblings, which came off more than a little unnerving through the makeup. "We'd love to join you if… if you'd have us."

"Yeah, Dip, see? It's all a misunderstanding!" Mabel said, palm up at the other girl. "Nobody here wants to hurt anybody else –" (Wirt wiped at the drying blood on his face as Dipper rubbed, again, at the back of his head) "– and we can't just give up on maybe the only other people in the whole world right now."

"You keep using the word _people,"_ her brother muttered under his breath.

"Christ. This again?" Beatrice griped. She pointed at Wirt. "He's bleeding red as anyone, isn't he? Do you want us all to stick ourselves first and let you run some tests on what comes out?" A howl rose from the trees behind her and she shuddered visibly.

"They're really scared, Dipper," Mabel said, and her voice was gentle. "Just like us."

The teenager looked uncertainly at the ground and snorted. "Fine," he said, standing up. "Fine, they can sit with us. But anyone makes a bad move…" He gingerly fingered the blade on his belt, apparently retrieved from wherever he'd dropped it after his felling blow, but his heart didn't look so into it anymore.

The six of them settled uneasily by the fire, crammed tightly into the spaces between roots and in the crevices of tree trunks. Beatrice kept a worried eye on Wirt from where she sat a few feet away; he wanted to acknowledge her concern, but was having trouble keeping focused long enough to actually do it. Greg plopped down on the ground and pulled a shiny foil package out of his pocket, which crinkled loudly as he opened it. He tumbled its contents into his hand and counted them out carefully, apparently unaware that every eye was on him as he did so. "Okay," he said after a minute, and stood up to take a few steps toward Dipper. Wirt tensed as the space between them closed. "Here you go," he said to the stranger, and held out a fist. Dipper knitted his brows, at both him and his proffered hand, but slowly reached to accept it. Greg dropped something into his palm. He did the same for Mabel, and his brother, and Beatrice and Sara as well. Wirt raised the gift to his face: a pair fruit snacks, shaped like a bat and a witch's hat. "Two for everybody," Greg explained as he sat back down and popped one into his mouth. "That seems fair."

"Greg," Beatrice said, "why are you giving our food to…?"

"Everybody's mad, so I think we should eat," Greg said patiently, giving his second fruit snack to Jason Funderburker. "Remember what Mom says, Wirt? 'An empty tummy makes for a crummy chummy.'" He rubbed his belly as it growled. "Mmm! Try it!"

Wirt looked down again at the fruit snacks and sent a sidelong glance at Beatrice. She looked as mollified as he felt. "Is this… cherry?" the girl called Mabel asked hesitantly before eating one. Dipper didn't partake, but stared at the fruit snacks like he couldn't believe they were real.

"Where did you get these?" he asked. It was the first thing to come out of his mouth that didn't sound angry.

"Halloween!" Greg said, patting the ground with his hands in an excited little beat. "Do you like them?"

Mabel chewed and swallowed slowly, and sniffed when she was done. "Yeah, I do," she said, voice slightly choked. "Thanks, kid."

"My name's Greg!" He reached inside his shirt. "And this is Jason Funderburker. He's our frog."

Her face split into a grin. "Thanks, Greg," she corrected herself, and ruffled his hair, which made him laugh. She looked longingly at the other snack before slipping it into her skirt pocket, and even in his fuzzy state of mind, Wirt could tell that she was rationing it.

Sara seemed to have noticed the same thing. "How long has it been since you've eaten?" she asked, aghast. Neither Dipper nor Mabel said, but the answer was clear enough.

With the campfire warming their faces, and while Greg happily doled out candy to each person present with great consideration given to their preferences, Sara finally started to talk. She took charge of clarifying their circumstances in the same way she'd taken charge of most everything since the Unknown spilled out into the real world, presenting the facts – Halloween night, the changing moon, black flora and fauna all – like the unflappable rationalist she was, while Dipper and Mabel listened gravely, nodding every once in a while as if to confirm what she said was true.

Greg waved a mango candy in front of his brother's face. "Wirt," he whispered loudly. "Are you gonna eat dinner?"

It was nearly all they'd had in two days; his stomach turned over at the idea of eating sweets ever again. "No."

The eight-year-old gave him a skeptical look and said, "But it's candy. For _dinner,"_ as if the older boy hadn't realized the gravity of this occurrence. Wirt waved him down in time to catch the last lines of Sara's brief narrative.

"…and there was just – nobody there." She wrapped herself up in her arms. "When we went to my dad's house there was a _tree_ in the middle of the living room. Can you believe that?" Dipper's face was unreadable, but Mabel absently shook her head, utterly engrossed. "I got a gun out of the safe and we grabbed whatever supplies we could from the house but it was just –" She took a steadying breath. "We've been walking for two days and haven't run into anything but deer and birds. And whatever makes… that _noise."_ A pained look crossed her face as said noise cracked through the night, cackling like a banshee. "We haven't been able to make a fire, so when we saw yours we thought – we just had to know who could have even _made_ it out here in the middle of nowhere. Had to be sure it was safe. And you know what happened next." The skull on her face looked gold, like Incan treasure in the firelight. "I still can't believe any of this is really happening."

"Pretty much the same story here," Dipper said, finally speaking up. He picked up a stick to stir the embers. Some sparks went up with a puff of smoke, and Beatrice coughed. "We all definitely got hit with the same… event. Or whatever it was." He glanced up sharply. "Are you coming from Piedmont, too?"

Sara looked at Wirt with a raised eyebrow which asked if he'd even heard of such a place. "No," she said after a minute. "Aberdale."

"Oh." Dipper gave his sister a look very much like Sara's. "Is that to the… east of here?"

They had been traveling west for two days, so – "Yeah," Sara said, sounding tired. "Wherever 'here' is, I guess."

"I told you," Greg said patiently from where he'd settled by his brother's knee. "It's the Unknown."

"Right," she murmured. She looked at Beatrice, or rather the side of her head as she was turned away, and then up at the branches fading into darkness above their heads. A small sliver of moon peeked through the canopy. "The Unknown." Her expression was inscrutable.

"This isn't the Unknown," Beatrice muttered, speaking up for the first time since they'd sat down. Her eyes were intent on the fire, or maybe just intent on avoiding eye contact with anyone else. Wirt shifted uncomfortably. It wasn't the first time they'd had this argument; he knew better than to rise to the bait, but Greg did not.

"No, it's definitely the Unknown," he repeated self-assuredly. "I remember. I can feel it." He pointed at the moon in the crisscrossed sky above to solidify his point.

But Beatrice said, "It doesn't matter what it feels or looks or even _smells_ like, Greg. This isn't the Unknown, because my _home_ isn't here." Her hands clenched briefly. "I should be in bed right now, but I'm not, because last time I crawled into it I woke up in a graveyard I've never seen before in my life. I should be at home with my _family,_ but no, I'm stuck out in the middle of the woods again with a couple of losers who only ever wanted to leave them." Wirt knew better than to take her bad mood personally, but couldn't help frowning. Greg seemed unfazed.

"What do you mean, again?" Mabel asked warily, rocking back and forth on a root and hugging her knees. "What's unknown?"

"Long story," Beatrice muttered, and maybe it was the unapproachable exhaustion in her voice or maybe Mabel just didn't care that much, but that put the subject to rest. All six of them tried stolidly to ignore the yelps and cackles that sounded in the woody distance. The older teens achieved this through forced silence, but Greg stood up and walked over to Mabel.

"Hey, Maple?" he asked.

"It's Mabel." She ruffled his hair again. "'Sup, little dude?"

"Do you have any s'more marshmallows?"

"I wish," she said. "Do you?"

"Kinda!" He pulled a Mallow-Nut Smacker out of his sweater with a flourish. "It's got chocolate and peanut butter on it, though. I don't know if it can lawfully be s'mores or not."

"Child," Mabel said with gravity, "it's already _more_ s'mores than a normal marshmallow." His face cracked into a grin and Jason Funderburker popped out of the collar of his sweater with a low _'Rorrp.'_

"Jason Funderburker says he likes you. Do you want us be friends when everyone stops fighting?"

"I think we're already friends!" she said happily, and he seemed delighted to hear her say so. He bounded to pick up the stick they'd been using to stoke the fire, and he and Mabel began to spear the candy bar on it as Dipper looked up to the rest of them.

"So where are you going?" he asked. He still looked heavily distrustful, but at least he was reaching out.

"West. Ish," Wirt said, deflecting. He wasn't sure how much of their plans they ought to be sharing with jumpy distrustful strangers.

"Yeah, I know, I got that," he said, pulling his mouth to the side in a grimace. "But where are you _going?"_

Wirt said, "Why does it matter?" but Sara shushed him and looked meaningfully at Beatrice. The redheaded girl glowered and crossed her arms.

"It's somewhere called Gravity Falls," she muttered under her breath. "Whatever that is."

Dipper grew surprisingly still when he heard her say that and Mabel cried, "Hey! That's where we're going, too!" around a mouthful of dripping peanut butter. She and his Greg were both covered in chocolate, the only two among them not stressed out and angry. Wirt started to ask her why, but was superseded by Dipper demanding the same question of them.

"Where did you get that idea?" he asked them. His expression was sharp. "Why are you trying to go to Gravity Falls?"

Sara took the initiative to try and answer and, once again, was forced to turn her gaze to Beatrice, who looked as miffed as ever and threw up her hands. "A _little bird_ told me. There, is that good enough for you? Why does it matter how I know? Why are _you_ going there?"

Dipper's brows knit heavily. "Because that's where all this started," he said, voice low, a palm out to indicate the trees around them. He reached for the stick to stir the fire again, but realized Mabel still had it and kept his hands busy by wringing them instead. His fingers were knotty and long. "That's where we've gotta be if we want to make it stop." Gravity Falls did sound like the kind of place one might come across in the Unknown; Wirt imagined a mighty waterfall flowing off the edge of the world. His visualization was still working on overdrive, and the dizzying heights he conjured were actually enough to make him slightly light-headed. Or maybe that was still just the concussion.

"Wirt!" Greg skipped over to him with what might have once been a marshmallow in his hands, now reduced to lumpy white goo that trailed from his chin to his fingers. "Do you want some dessert?"

"No thanks, Greg."

"Mm, okay. But I'm monitoring your appetite and will have to recommend treatment if it doesn't improve soon." He scarfed down what was left of the candy treat and wiped his hands on his sweater, a frayed oversized orange thing Wirt had grown out of when he was thirteen. Wirt arranged his lap appropriately so that Greg could lean up against his legs, and the child did so, blinking sleepily. He didn't startle when another lonesome howl split the woods, and Jason Funderburker crawled out of the collar and snuggled underneath the young boy's arm with a little ribbit.

Mabel watched them with her fists curled against her cheeks. "You two seem really close," she said dreamily. "It's so cute."

"Oh. Thanks." Truthfully, Wirt liked when people noticed that, but was too embarrassed to say so. "Um, you… you too?" Dipper and Mabel looked at each other; the former rubbed the back of his head bashfully and the latter took him around the shoulders.

"That's us!" she chirped, pushing her chubby cheek against her brother's more sallow one. "Mystery Twins, two peas in a pod!"

"You're twins?" Sara asked, perking up. Mabel gave her a 'you know it' kind of grin. "That's funny. I would have thought you were younger."

"HA!" Dipper said suddenly, turning to his sister. "I told you! I told you I'd turn out to be the Alpha Twin!"

"Being the Alpha Twin isn't just about _height,"_ she shot back, sticking out her tongue. "It's also about _maturity_ and _grace_ and _buxomness –"_ Her brother turned away and covered his eyes, red-faced, and Mabel and Sara both snorted with laughter, the peals echoing surprisingly loudly in their tiny clearing.

"Twins," Beatrice muttered from her little alcove in an oak's trunk. "Of course they're twins. My sisters are twins. They're just as exasperating as you two."

"Get used to it," Mabel said, throwing gun-hands in Beatrice's direction with a wink and a _tch-tch_ , "cause you're gonna be seeing a lot more of us on the way up!"

"Up where?" Wirt asked warily.

"Yeah, Mabel," Dipper said, sounding equally uneasy. "Up where?"

She looked like she couldn't believe all of them. "To Gravity Falls, sillies!" She threw her hands out wide. "We're all going together!"

In chorus, Wirt, Beatrice, and Dipper said, "What?" at the same moment that Sara and Greg piped up, "Really?"

"Of course!" The girl threw a hand around her brother's shoulder, and leaned over in the other direction to take Sara's as well. "Just like all the children's shows said, we're better off when we work together. You've got the food and weapons, and we've got the lighter and my brother's fantastic nerd-power to remember everything about wilderness survival he's ever read!"

"It's not a _nerd-power,_ Mabel. It's called studying."

"Who cares?!" She beamed around at them all, and received responses ranging from matching grins to distrustful frowns.

"It's a really good idea," Sara said to Beatrice and Wirt. Wirt knew she wasn't wrong, but every time he thought about it his head throbbed. He was less than fond of the idea of saddling themselves with two extra mouths to feed when one of those mouths was clearly on the angry and trigger-happy side – but if Greg were to get hurt, someone with first aid knowledge would be invaluable…

"Okay," he said wearily, leaning back against his tree with a hand over the aching side of his skull. "Fine. We'll go together."

"Don't I get any say in this?" Dipper asked, still visibly suspicious of the whole endeavor.

"Of course not," Mabel said patiently, "because you'll go wherever I go, and I just agreed to go with them." Her brother didn't look happy with that, but didn't even bother to refute it. He crossed his arms and stared grumpily at the fire.

Wirt turned to Beatrice, head throbbing as he moved. Her wild red hair was tied up poorly with the scrunchie Sara had found in one of her jacket pockets; it was as blue as a bluebird's wing. "Beatrice?" he asked.

He was prepared to be felled by vicious sarcasm, but surprisingly, she just sighed. "Sure," she said listlessly, staring out into the woods. "Fine. Whatever."

"That's great." Sara turned to Mabel and Dipper with hope in her eyes. "That's wonderful. Then we've agreed?" Mabel shook her hand with great ceremony.

As Greg snuggled down into his lap, Wirt kept his eye on Beatrice. She looked blank, as though a curtain had closed behind her face. "Hey," he said quietly, and she looked up. "Thanks for, you know. _Aherm._ "His voice cracked a little. "Assaulting someone on my behalf."

She shrugged languidly. "You're welcome," she said. Her voice was surprisingly gentle. "You'd do the same if you weren't so noodly and weak." Even through the flippant joke, she looked worried, or angry. "You can pay me back by not dying in your sleep tonight, I guess."

"Oh. I'll do my best," he said. There was a lot more he wanted to say, but she looked away, and he decided that the moment had passed.

Gradually the group fell into scattered quiet chatter, broken up only occasionally by new voices from the woods. Wirt didn't say much – talking made his head hurt – but he tried to relax against the tree as the fire burned low and Greg snuggled into his lap, gradually wrapping the traveling cloak in a tent around his little body. The moon wasn't moving in the sky; it sat at a stubborn 30 degrees, casting light at a low angle athwart the spindly canopy above. He stared at the silvered trunks with the feeling, not for the first time, that history was folding back on itself, rewinding, preparing to send them off in another direction from a point they had already visited. Two days in these woods, and he still didn't know what to think of them. Was Beatrice right to say this was not the Unknown? He hoped not. Whatever other things their return might imply, the Unknown held at least one assurance for them: So long as you could find it, there was always a road home.

He looked at Sara, talking animatedly with Mabel and her brother, and at Beatrice, still brooding against her tree, visibly bristling with distrust. Greg had already fallen fast asleep. Wirt brushed a little hair from the kid's forehead, and slowly closed his own aching eyes. It had been a very, very long day.

Despite his weariness, he did not sleep well, and woke several times stiff-backed and prickling with the feeling that he was being watched, though the forest was still and quiet as the grave.

* * *

 **Only the second chapter, and this fic is already trying to kill me. This section went through two straight weeks of editing and reworking, including three complete POV changes, resulting in a grand total of 25 pages' worth of unused writing - so consider that my excuse for why this update has taken its sweet damn time. I really am aiming to settle into a pattern of posting on a weekly basis, but am also incredibly anal about perceived quality, and those two things tend not to line up so well for me.**

 **If you found yourself tickled by the arrangement of words and letters herein, lend your support by leaving a comment here or on my Tumblr at whiggitymacabee. tumblr. com!**


	3. An Interlude for the Side Characters

**Herein lie the Wendy, Soos, and Pacifica parts of the story which I promised in the tags. Oh, you didn't think I was going to be content with juggling only six POVs, did you? Oh, no no. I'm taking on ELEVEN, motherfuckers! When this causes me to inevitably keel over in front of the keyboard, please make sure my tombstone reads, "She tried." I'm leaving everything to my bearded dragon.**

3

 _Halloween night, two hours pre-activation. 9:13 PM. Hood River, OR._

"Doot doo doo-doo, tuckin' Sooslets into bed. Doot doo doo-doo, ticklin' little feet…"

 _"Daddyyy!"_ Margie screeched, laughing wildly as her father snagged her leg and whisked his fingers over her heel. "Ha _hahaha,_ n-nooo! _I can vanquish you, tickle monster!"_ She kicked madly in the air as Soos picked her up by the ankle and swung her up onto his shoulders, where the little girl clung tightly, curly hair frazzled and face split by a grin.

"Can't tickle me now!" she cried, lifting her legs up next to his ears so that her feet touched his nose. "Mom. Mommy. Look, Mom. _Mom!_ Look, I'm on top of the tickle monster!" She grabbed two handfuls of his hair triumphantly. "He's dominated!"

From the bed on the other side of the small room, Melody gave a wry grin, still sitting close to Stan Jr. as he cuddled into her side. "You did it, Margie!" she said, pumping her fist in the air. "You know, if you give the tickle monster a kiss, he'll stop being a monster and turn back into your daddy."

Margie's eyes went wide. _"I'll save you, Daddy,"_ she said breathlessly, and leaned forward to land a peck on her father's temple. Soos stiffened at the contact, and began to stumble around madly with a hand over his eye.

"Whoa…" he said woozily, holding on to Margie's feet as he swayed exaggeratedly to and fro between his son and daughter's twin-sized beds. The little girl shrieked with laughter. "Oh my goodness… What happened?" he asked, straightening up again and squinting around. "It's like I suddenly stopped being a tickle monster and turned back into Margie and Stan's dad again!"

"I SAVED HIM!" Margie screamed, making both Soos and Melody wince, and finally the latter stood up to pull the four-year-old down from her father's shoulders.

"Alright now, no shouting," she said firmly, laying Margie into bed, where she began to pout. "It's getting late, and there are a couple of little kiddos in this here room who need to sleep."

"Not me!" Margie said forcefully, while Stan Jr. piped up in a small whisper, "I _can't_ sleep."

"Aw, come on, little dude," Soos said, sitting down on his younger child's bed with a _wumpf_ that nearly bounced the boy fully off the mattress. "You didn't think Shimmery Twinkleheart's Spooky Friendship Special was _that_ scary, did ya?" Stan shrugged uncertainly. "Aww. Hey, it's Halloween night, kid," he said, ruffling the three-year-old's tawny hair with a big rough hand. "Lookin' at spooky stuff is fun sometimes, but it's not real. Nothin's gonna hurt you. You've got your awesome mom and dad around to make sure about that."

"And ME," Margie said, standing up in bed and puffing out her chest. "I'll make sure nothin' eats Stan all night if I have to."

 _"Eats_ me?" Stan asked, pulling the blankets up to his chin with wide eyes.

Melody said soothingly, "No," and laid him down in bed with a hand on his forehead that she then switched out for a kiss. "Nothing's going to eat you, Stanley. You're gonna sleep niiice and tight, and have sweet dreams, and in the morning we'll all eat waffles together."

"…Really?" he asked.

"Really." She stood up and gave Margie a kiss of her own. "Goodnight, my little _Margarita,_ " she said. Her accent was getting better all the time. "Sweet dreams."

"Night, Mommy," Margie said, flopping onto her pillow and closing her eyes. She immediately started to snore. Stan laid down a little more slowly, eyes big as he stared around at the window and the stuffed animals on the shelf above his big sister's bed.

"Nothing bad's gonna happen?" he asked warily. "You promise?"

"We promise, dude," Soos said, tucking the little boy in, and he and Melody stood in the doorway to watch him close his eyes before turning off the lights and shutting the door.

In the darkness of the hallway outside, Soos saw Melody wring her hands a little. "I knew he was too young for scary Halloween movies," she whispered. "Even if it _is_ just, you know, Shimmery Twinkleheart. He's a sensitive kid."

"Aah, he'll be fine," Soos said, wrapping an arm around her shoulders and walking with her down the hall. "Gotta learn how to stare down the scary stuff sometime, ya know?" He meant that in more than the general sense; it was an essential life skill when they visited Gravity Falls to see _abuelita._ "But if he really can't sleep, wake me up and I'll go in for midnight hugs, alright?" He flipped on the light in their bedroom and drooped onto the mattress.

Melody smiled as she stopped in front of the bureau to pull out her nightshirt. "Alright, Soos," she said, starting to change while her husband hung up his bathrobe. "But if it's too bad, you've gotta promise me. No more scary movies next year, not even Shimmery Twinkleheart. Not for a long while."

"You have my word," he said, raising a hand scout's-honor style and crawling under the sheets in his undies while Melody did the same. They lay side-by-side in bed, her head resting on his shoulder, and fell asleep to the sound of one another's breathing.

Soos was not normally the type to be bothered by nightmares, but that night, he couldn't help tossing and turning in bed as images of a great slitted eye filled his dreams, sitting in the place in the sky where the moon ought to be. When he finally woke, wide-eyed in the dark of the master bedroom, it was with a racing heart and slightly sweaty pits. _Maybe Shimmery Twinkleheart was scarier that I gave it credit for,_ he thought foggily as he rolled over toward Melody, feeling for her warm shape on the mattress next to him. He patted around gently; the king-sized bed always seemed even bigger than normal when they were trying to find one another for late-night snuggles, but she really didn't seem to be there. Her spot between the covers was warm. She must have been using the bathroom. Gradually, he fell back into a doze.

A long time passed, and somewhere in the folds between sleep and consciousness, he was aware that there was no sound or movement from the master bath, and no gentle pressure from his wife climbing back into bed next to him. When he opened his eyes again, the room was bathed in dull predawn light, and Melody still hadn't returned. Soos sat up and pushed the covers back with creaking stretch. She was an early riser, but not usually this early.

He shuffled through the cold house in his bathrobe, peeking into the kitchen and office in hopes of locating her. Nothing. If Stan Jr. had had nightmares after all, she'd probably ended up sleeping in his bed. With a muffled yawn, he pushed open the door to the kids' room and squinted in the blue light. "Melody?" he whispered, leaning in a little further. No response. He didn't even see Stan in Stan's bed, let alone his wife. "Kids?" He stepped in a little blindly and felt about on Margie's mattress for her pudgy shape. The blankets were flat and her pillow was empty. "Margie? Stan? Where're my Sooslets at?" He tried to keep his tone light, but searched a little more desperately on the other bed. Nothing and no one.

 _Don't panic,_ he thought to himself as he stood back up. _Be cool, dude._ Maybe they'd all gone out to watch the sunrise together. He took a deep breath and looked out the east-facing window.

You couldn't see the sunrise from that window, though. The view of the horizon and lawn and, indeed, the entire street, was completely overtaken by tall and dense trees, which Soos knew for like an 88% fact had not been there when he went to bed last night. For a minute he just stood still, taking it in. What did it say about the kind of life he'd lived that this was not the strangest thing that had ever happened to him? And knowing that somehow made it less scary. He knew he wasn't always the brightest glow stick in the foil-lined package, but he was still pretty good at figuring out the inner workings of stuff. Right now, he was minus one wife and two Sooslets, and plus a whole bunch of trees that weren't supposed to be there.

It didn't precisely add up, but call it a handyman's intuition to know when two pieces ought to fit together.

Soos didn't waste any time packing his stuff. He was out on the road before the sun had fully risen past the horizon, calling for his family, and nobody had cause to complain about it, because there was nobody else there.

–

 _Thirty-eight hours post-activation. 1:19 PM. Portland, OR._

Wendy Corduroy stepped up to the crest of the hill, thumb hooked into the strap of her backpack, tugging it downward to relieve the pressure on her shoulders. The sky was gray and the wind was stiff. She raised a hand above her brow and squinted toward the horizon, misted by distance and low clouds across the treetops. Visibility was no more than a mile or two, but it didn't matter. They were getting closer every day; she could feel it in her bones.

 _"Wendyyy,"_ she heard called from further down the hill, with a clattering of rocks and leaves as her companion came scrambling up the incline behind her. It was all she could do not to snap at him. They needed not to make any more noise than necessary.

"W- _hunh-_ Wendy, babe," Robbie panted, pitching over to put his hands on his knees as he finally caught up with her. For affecting himself these last few years as the sort of guy who wears toe shoes, he was astonishingly out of shape. He brushed back the hair from his face that was still too short to fit into his man-bun and said with a nervous laugh, "Jeez, babe. Gotta, uh, slow down a little, ya know? You're gonna kill me."

"Suck it up and can it, Robbie," Wendy said wearily. "We're not slowing down."

"Well, we can't keep up this pace forever," Robbie griped, crossing his arms across his ratty hemp-woven hoodie. "Getting to Gravity Falls from the Valley is, like, sixty miles uphill the whole way. We'll knock ourselves out before we get halfway at this rate."

She knew he wasn't wrong. She wasn't nearly as energetic as she made out to be, but walking fast was a really good way to put distance between the two of them. "If you don't wanna do this my way, you can go back home," she said. "Oh wait, that's right, you _can't,_ because your illegal basement apartment with the composting toilet is full of _elm roots_ now." With a distasteful look, she turned and began scanning for the easiest path down the far side of the hill, slick with pine needles and clay. "It's the end of the world, Robbie. This is not the time to be a pussy about working up a little sweat."

"Aw, come on, babe," Robbie called as she started to descend, leaning backwards to keep traction on the incline. "Don't be that way."

"I'm not your babe," she snapped up at him, in perfect time to miss her footing and land on her ass on the damp ground. She groaned and buried her eyes in the heels of her hands as Robbie called down, "Don't worry, babe, I'm coming for you!"

Of all the nights she could have chosen to sleep with him again, of _course_ it had to be the one where they'd wake up in the morning as the last two people on Earth. How else would God be able to so bluntly communicate the depths of His loathing for her?

Robbie cried, "Whoa!" as he started to stumble down the hill, sliding in his toe shoes like the skater boi he'd so badly wanted to be in seventh grade. She watched him sail past her with pinwheeling arms and didn't feel bad about enjoying it; she deserved a little entertainment for her trouble. At the very least, it helped her temporarily forget about what they might be walking into.

Only five years out of Gravity Falls and she was already going back. Hell of a joke, when she'd been so certain she was gone forever after what went down at the Mystery Shack in '12. At the time, it had seemed like the perfect moment to rip off the bandage of her small-town existence: She had an older cousin in Portland, a place she'd always wanted to live anyway, and being involved in averting the end of the world is traumatic enough stuff that a girl could be forgiven for bailing on everything else. She knew deep down that it would break her father's heart, knew her brothers might be lost without her, but told herself fiercely that she couldn't treat her family as her responsibility forever. She wasn't Mom, no matter how much they tried to pretend. When Soos and the Pines twins left, so did she.

She'd had occasion to reflect on that decision since, and still wasn't always sure how to feel about the proportion of teenage self-interest that had been involved in it. Admittedly, she was proud of what she'd managed to do with herself since then: She'd graduated high school. Found an apartment of her own. Gotten most of the way through a degree in social work; she knew all too well what it's like to be the singular child trying to keep a dysfunctional household together, and her heart ached for the kids out there who reminded her too much of herself. She was doing better now than she likely ever would have if she'd stayed in Gravity Falls, and all she wanted anymore was a job spent doing good things, a middle-aged shelter dog, and a home full of hoppy beer that was within walking distance of the Pearl. Was that really so much to ask?

 _Guess so,_ she thought as Robbie toppled head over heels into a heap at the bottom of the hill. She stood and wiped off her hands on the back of the skirt she'd been wearing when she woke up on the morning of All Saints' Day, hungover and initially uncomprehending of the tree branches that had grown up through her window overnight. This was the new reality, apparently, and one she by rights should have left behind in her hometown, but there was no use complaining now. The only thing to do was buckle down and take responsibility for what needed doing.

A growl erupted from the dark of the trees near where Robbie was still struggling to right himself. He looked up and his eyes grew wide. "B-b-babe," he stammered, stumbling backwards into a spindly ocean spray. Wendy tensed, bracing herself on the hillside, thinking, _Jesus Christ, not again._ Something huge was moving between the trunks, orange eyes glowing lightly in the gloom. "Shit. Shit! _Wendy!"_

Wendy was already running. She reached behind her head and pulled out the axe hanging from the top loop of her backpack without missing a beat. This was Junior Lumberjack stuff; _Thanks, Dad,_ she thought briefly as she took a flying leap from ten feet up the steep incline, affecting her best Tarzan scream. The thing stepped out of the darkness, all teeth and eyeballs, like a piranha crossbred with a spider, and slammed its fists against the ground with an ear-splitting roar, twenty of its gazes held on Robbie not two yards away. He screamed and curled into a small ball at the base of the tree.

And then with a sickening crunch, the thing roared again, rearing up in pain as Wendy balanced herself wildly atop its back, wrenching her axe blade from the creature's neck and slamming it down again with a grimace. Oily black _something_ spurted from the wounds and splattered across her once-crisp white dress shirt. She was thrown to the ground as it bucked, but found her feet again quickly. She landed a few more slices across its forelimbs and haunches, releasing more black bile from its scaly body with singular determination. It screamed horribly and tried to swipe at her, but her blows were relentless.

As the sun pierced the thick clouds above, only briefly, the monster finally gave a gurgling moan and collapsed onto its side, and Wendy was left standing, holding her stained axe in both hands and splattered with otherworldly viscera as the pale light lit her from behind. Her shoulders heaved as she stared down the creature she had chopped nearly to pieces; then she turned to Robbie and directed the axe's blade at him this time.

"We're traveling at _my_ speed," she snapped as he tried to scramble to his feet, eyeballing the black goo which puddled out from the monster's corpse. "And you're gonna keep up and stay close to me, or the next time _that_ happens –" she pointed furiously at the dead thing on the ground "– I'm not gonna be there to save you. Got it?"

"Yeah," Robbie goggled, nodding vigorously. "Absolutely. Whatever you say, babe."

Wendy was going to tell him again not to call her babe, but bit her tongue. It wasn't worth the effort that it took, and she had to conserve her energy. Robbie was right about one thing: they had a long way to go before they arrived in Gravity Falls. She'd always said she was never going back, but of course she was going to go back.

She'd left her family behind the last time disaster loomed, but she was older and wiser now, and damned if anything in this world or the next could stop her from getting back to them.

–

 _Sixty hours post-activation. 11:31 AM. Gravity Falls, OR._

"Stupid locked door," Pacifica panted, shoving her shoulder against the vending machine once again. It hardly budged. "Stupid – Pines – _family!"_ She gave another heave with all her might, designer shoes slipping against the wooden floor, but it made no difference. With a strangled scream, she slid down the glass front with her hands buried in her hair and dropped her phone into her lap. Her reflection stared back at her, dark-circled and two days unwashed. This, here and now, was the innermost circle of hell.

With a sniff, she unlocked the screen and miserably typed out, _Can't get in. Been trying for two days and I just can't do it. Need ur help love._ She tried to send it to Em, but as always, the phone just beeped sadly and relayed the message, 'No service available.' Pacifica buried her face in her hands. The disused gift shop was cold, the worn runner on which she sat eaten at the edges by moths. The little cheerleader that had been doing hurrahs in her head for two days now – _"You can do it! Don't give up! A Northwest never quits!"_ – was finally starting to run down. She was exhausted and disheartened and she smelled like an off-price department store: sweaty and sad.

The phone's screen went dark again and she chewed on her bottom lip, which was rough and nubby. She didn't have any lip gloss; it, and most other essentials, had been left behind at Northwest Manor when she woke up on the morning after Halloween to find the house overrun by greenery in much the same manner as it had been during the Annual Northwest High-Society Shindig Ball Soiree-haunting of 2012. That had spooked her, to say the least, and not without reason, but had she known then that things were just as bad everywhere else in town and that a murderous lumberjack ghost was not, in fact, coming back to cleave in her head, she would have grabbed a lot more than her purse before she left. Now the roads back home were almost impassable, as unrecognizable as anything else through the thickening creep of the forest. The wilderness might very well have had ambition to consume Gravity Falls altogether.

The singular exception to that rule had turned out to be the long-defunct Mystery Shack, something she found out when she pulled up in her Mustang just in time for the vines that had grown up beneath the hood to choke out the engine entirely. She didn't know what she was doing there except for having a vague sense that this sort of thing was _always_ the Pines' fault, even if the twins hadn't been to the Shack together since that summer five years back. She entered the house to find it empty, dusty – Stanley still lived there, supposedly, but nobody saw much of him these days.

"Hello?" she'd called, slipping inside the open front door a little awkwardly; Pacifica was not normally one to enter another's home without an invitation, even a friend's. The lights were off, but there was still-warm coffee in the pot and enough canned goods in the pantry to last several weeks. She'd decided to wait for someone – Stanley? Dipper? She wasn't sure what she expected – to return home, and at some point the wait had turned into a stay. It wasn't like she had anywhere else to go. By all appearances, she was the last person left in Gravity Falls. She'd spent twenty-four hours holed up in the living room with only a dinosaur skull-cum-side table for company, hoping against hope that the situation might miraculously resolve itself while she sat inside eating crackers and canned soup.

And then, yesterday evening, the anomalies had started up again.

Pacifica had just laid down to sleep on the awful wool-upholstered living room couch that smelled like a vintage car when she found herself captured by a curious weightlessness. She thought for a moment that she was just falling asleep, but when she opened her eyes realized that she was floating four feet above the cushions, her scrappy polyester-edged blanket a couple of inches removed from her prone body. It lasted only a second; she screamed, and the whole scene fell apart, as if startled back to normalcy. She bounced off the couch and then fell hard to the floor, while everything else in the room not nailed down slammed into the tables and shelves from whence they'd lifted.

It only happened once that night, but that was far from the end of it. She'd since taken to sleeping with a short rope tied from her waist to the couch springs.

No matter how close she and the Pines had eventually become all those years ago, she was never really one for the paranormal stuff. While the twins tromped around in the woods trying to catch naiads or who knew what else, and she was happy to stay behind somewhere with clean floors and a healthy cell phone signal, thank you very much. Dipper was always the ringleader in those expeditions anyway, so after he stopped coming and it was just the girls left together during summer breaks, they'd found different ways to entertain themselves, activities which brought them ever further away from the strange things that lurked in the woods. No matter how badly she would have preferred to avoid the weird, though, Pacifica had finally had just about enough. Her family and friends were gone, her hometown hardly existed anymore – a girl has a limit, and it was astonishing that it had taken her this long to reach it.

Maybe she'd never had much of a head for the weird stuff Dipper liked to talk about, but even she knew what gravitational anomalies meant. By now she had spent eighteen hours, on and off, trying to open the vending machine to get into the basement. Something downstairs was acting up again, and she might be the only one in the world who could stop it – but no matter how desperately hard she tried, she couldn't do it. She'd never known the password to that weird bunker, never asked, never in a million years thought she would need to have it memorized – but here she was. She could not move the machine, or break the glass. Every once in a while, she thought that the intersection between the vending machine and wall seemed to glow, like light around a closed door, but it never lasted long enough for her to be sure.

She was so close, and yet so far. As she sat in front of the vending machine cradling her temples, she felt tears prickle at her eyes. She was going to starve to death out here in this god-forsaken Shack, and nobody would ever know about it, because she was the last woman on Earth. She would never get to go to college abroad or dramatically cut her mother and father out of her life or have a controversial flirtation with movie stardom, and she would never, ever again get to see the only person in the world that she had ever really loved –

And as if to prove the point that her life was, indeed, falling apart at the seams, she felt her scalp suddenly prickle and her hair lift buoyantly into the air as a great rumble shook the Shack from beams to floorboards. With a muffled sob, Pacifica opened up her half-dead phone again with shaking hands and texted, _So scared. Really need u babe._ _U were always the brave one._

She sent it to Em, like she did all of them, and let the inevitable failed bleep carry her up into the air as gravity fell away once again.

* * *

 **Please forgive my tendency to move the town of Gravity Falls around the state as I see fit and invoke heavy-handed tropes about Portland; as a native Oregonian, I must admit to having some very strong opinions on these matters. (Such as, why do they keep marking the town as being in Central/Eastern Oregon on various maps when it's clearly set somewhere in the Cascades? Arglflargl.) I do think that once Robbie grows the dye out of his hair and moves somewhere with a little more culture, the next fad he'll glom onto will be that of hippiedom. You can all feel free to imagine him smoking weed with the crusties on the waterfront and talking about how widespread adoption of a food-based barter system is our only chance at solving climate change, maaan.**

 **If you wanna know what it was like to grow up in the real-life Gravity Falls (which I actually did; that's not a joke), leave a comment or send me an ask at whiggitymacabee. tumblr. com! Full disclosure: I'm talking it up to attract your attention, but to be honest, all the answers are going to be very... _Boring._ Get it?! [FOLLOW MY BLOG FOR MORE INCREDIBLE JOKES LIKE THIS ONE]**


	4. Tricky Vengeful Little Animals

**I recently went back and retagged this story with Infinite Eyerolls. It wasn't where I expected things to go when I first started out, and it's still far from the plot focus, but more and more it's starting to play a role in characterization, so I might as well own up to it.**

 **This chapter is dedicated lovingly to MY DAD'S CAT, who, during its writing, was always there for me when I needed her least. When I wanted to sit down with my coffee and focus, she was ready to beg me to go outside, or in, or back out again; when I was finally getting productive work done, she was perpetually on hand to walk across the keyboard and show me her butthole. So here's to you, Squeaker: you made writing this even more of a chore than it already was, and got fur everywhere in the process. Bless.**

4

"Wake up, Bluebird."

Beatrice screwed up her face as the words jolted her kicking and moaning from sleep, and her first waking sensation was awareness of the unpleasant pit already sitting heavy in her stomach. Through her eyelids, she could tell that the sun had risen, but her heart was heavy and her limbs stiff; she wasn't prepared to face another day just yet. She lolled her head to the side, resolute not to open her eyes, and tried to settle back down into unconsciousness as she huddled down inside her cold arms.

"Now, don't be that way. I know you can hear me," the disembodied voice said again, crackly as wheat kernels in a grinder. She cracked an eye open and squinted at the heavy, brilliant beams of sunlight which lanced down through the tree canopy, swaddled in pink dawn mist. The leaves on the ground glistened, and she felt unpleasantly damp.

"Up here," the voice said once again. In the branches of the tree against which she lay was perched a large white crow, dark-eyed and looking straight at her. "Good morning, child," it said, fluttering its wings. It carried a mischievous smile in its demeanor. "How did you sleep?"

Beatrice did not answer at first. She sat up and looked around warily to see if any of her companions were awake to hear this. Wirt and Greg lay together under the former's big blue cloak, breathing deeply, and Sara was curled up in a small ball a few feet away. Their unwanted tag-alongs from the night before, the attack twins, slept back-to-back near the dead cold fire. For a minute she waited to see if any of them would stir, and then shot her gaze back up at the crow, pulling her dirty three-day nightdress tight around her chilly legs. "How do you know who I am?" she asked warily. She was forced to listen to birds' inane chatter often enough, but they rarely acknowledged her, and never before had she been purposefully sought out.

The white crow bobbed its head in some approximation of a shrug. "Crows are very wise birds," it said, skipping one branch lower and dropping a fine dewy mist on everything below it, Beatrice included. "We know lots of things. Things you and yours would be very interested in knowing, Bluebird."

"Don't call me that," she snapped, and then stopped herself to watch her companions for a reaction to the outburst. When none came, she pulled her knees in a little tighter and added in a lower voice, "And I don't take favors from anyone. Birds least of all. You're all tricky, vengeful little animals."

"Ohh, now that's some projection if I've ever heard it," the crow said, cocking its head to the side to fix her with one milky brown eye. Despite the snowy brilliance of its feathers, its beak was coal-black, so deep that it looked almost blue in the sunlight. "Why do you keep checking on your cohorts?" it asked, as she did just that once again. "If I didn't know better, I'd say you were afraid to have them see you talking to a bird." It blinked the one eye at her, and she had never seen an expression so full of self-satisfaction.

A little spear of annoyance and fear pierced her throat. "Have you been _following_ me?" she demanded, sitting up fully and setting her feet on the ground. Her toes felt wrinkled and swollen in the strange shoes Sara had given her. "Who do you think you are?"

"Just a crow," it said innocently, splitting a sunbeam as it spread its sharp white wings into the light. "A simple crow who likes to keep track of the goings-on in these wilds." Once again it jumped, and fluttered down to a low fir branch only a few yards from her. "You and your friends don't belong here."

"We know that," she said, squinting at the pale bird. "Where _is_ here?"

"The Unknown," the crow said to her.

"That's impossible," she insisted. "I know the Unknown. I've lived there my whole life –"

"Or something of the sort."

"– and none of this is right. There would be roads and fields. There would be people." She spared a glance at her still-sleeping companions. "Or people other than these bozos, anyway."

"Bluebird, you of all people should know the Unknown of late is not the place it's always been," said the white crow. She stared at her hands, colored brown with travel, and was unable to argue. It trotted down a length of its branch and said, "These woods are still a very small piece of infinity, but they've just grown much larger. You shouldn't be so certain you would recognize them any longer."

"Where's my family?" she asked, clutching the front of her nightdress. The once-fine fabric was slick with dirt. "Why did things change like this? How can _he_ be –" She cast her eyes over at Wirt, his tall form wrapped protectively around Greg's, but was cut off as the crow laughed.

"Oh, no," it said as it preened its back. "I'd hate to do you any favors, Bluebird. I'm a tricky, vengeful little animal, after all."

Beatrice flushed pink and opened her mouth to say that there's a difference between doing someone a favor and having common decency, but was cut off as one of the twins – the boy, named after a spoon – curled up tight on the ground and moaned thickly, "Ohh my God, will someone shut that bird up?" Beatrice bit her lip and turned away from the crow as he sat upright, half of his face dusted with dry earth and leafy debris. He looked to have some on his forehead as well, but the first thing he did was brush his hair down over it, almost instinctively. He squinted around, puffy-eyed, and settled on the big white bird in the tree not far from where Beatrice sat. "Shoo," he said, waving a hand at it. "No squawking. Some of us are trying to sleep."

The crow blinked impassively at him once, and then turned back to Beatrice to continue speaking like nothing had happened. "You're certainly of a temper, but I suppose bluebirds usually are," it said, and ruffled its feathers as if shaking off the damp. "I'll give you one piece for free, child, just to show goodwill. Keep an eye on your Pilgrim. He's going to need it more than any of you know."

Beatrice swallowed, but stolidly did not respond to the bird, while the newcomer sighed, exhausted, and put his face in his hands. "Jesus," he said under his breath. "Stupid animal. It looks like it's trying to talk to you."

"No kidding," Beatrice croaked from her little nook in the tree trunk. "The, uh… dumb thing woke me up, too." She spared the white crow another glance before looking quickly away. It pulled its head back as if affronted.

"Right," it said to Beatrice, voice full of disaffected injury, "you just go on pretending you can't understand me, then." It spread its wings to glide to a more distant tree, calling behind, _"I'm sure keeping secrets from your travelling companions will serve you as well this time as the last, Bluebird!"_ Beatrice's stomach seared with the question of how it knew about that, but she bit her tongue and did not react.

The stranger – his name was Dipper, she remembered now – watched it go with sleepy but interested eyes. "I've never seen a white crow before," he yawned as it soared off. He looked over at Beatrice, then looked away, and finally made another effort to establish solid eye contact, a noble thing to do when one party has made a fairly serious attempt on the other's life in the last twelve hours. "Morning, I guess," he said, voice strained.

"Morning," she said, equally stiffly. Their gaze maintained itself only a few seconds longer before breaking, and Beatrice curled herself into a little ball, eyeballing the shifting sunlight on the ground. Her stomach roiled with anxiety. She knew she was right not to accept help from the crow, but felt wrong-footed by its unsolicited advice. She wondered what it would have told her had she decided to listen. Probably nothing important, she told herself; birds rarely have ought worth listening to.

Even though the crow had gone, the forest canopy was far from quiet. Other birds were waking in the early morning and beginning to call out to one another, all the usual chatter that she'd gotten pretty good at ignoring these last three years: food and eggs and mates, and angry insults hurled between rival males. She hated it, not just for its incessancy, but for being the last remainder of the bluebird's bitter curse; speaking as a bird, apparently, is a skill not easily forgotten. A small family of chickadees was being particularly raucous this morning. "The teeth!" they chirped in chorus, feeding one another's hysterics. "The teeth are near!" Birds were full of nonsense like that. Beatrice closed her ears to it and looked back up.

Dipper's sister was starting to stir, yawning widely and then having to spit to get her long brown hair out of her mouth. "G'mornin' Dip," she said as she rolled over toward her twin, grinning sleepily. Then her eyes landed on Beatrice and she sat up the rest of the way. "Aaand good morning to you too, friend!" she said, holding out a hand, though they were too far from one another to attempt a handshake. "Tell me your name again, though? Because last night was preeetty crazy and honestly I don't remember."

Beatrice looked from her hand to her face to her hand, and back to her face. "Beatrice," she said finally.

"That's a really pretty name," said the girl, whose own name was Mabel, if memory served. Beatrice made a small noise of acknowledgment, which she tried not to let sound too gracious, at the same time that Sara, too, finally rose, hunched up inside her strange puffy men's jacket with the garish flag on its sleeve. She didn't speak to any of them, but stared at the ground with half-lidded eyes, her skin startlingly dark against the piercing sunlight. As much now as the first night they'd met, Beatrice felt a little staggered by it.

Everyone was awake now but Wirt and Greg, the former propped up halfway against a tree and the latter curled under his arm, head resting on his brother's stomach. Greg had a little smile on his face, and Wirt was snoring inelegantly open-mouthed, just as he'd always used to. Beatrice started to stand, thinking that she would wake them, but Sara was closer, and seemed to have the same idea. She got to them first.

"Wirt?" she whispered as she crouched down next to them. "Greg?" She hesitated, and touched Wirt's shoulder.

"He's sleepin'," Greg said without opening his eyes. "But I've been awake for a long time." He squeezed one eye closed tighter and opened the other, and looked at Beatrice with a grin. "You _were_ talking to that bird!"

Beatrice felt a heavy drop in her stomach, but fortunately, no one seemed to be paying much attention to what Greg said. Dipper was up scouting around the trees for who-knew-what, while Mabel fished around in her pocket for last night's second fruit snack and ate it with relish. Sara booped Greg's nose affectionately and then reached out, with much greater tenderness, to brush Wirt's hair from his face, the gesture speaking to years of history that Beatrice could only guess at, and did, constantly, whether she liked it or not.

To distract herself from it, she instead let her eyes drift down to Greg as he sat up with Wirt's cloak draped across one shoulder. In the space behind him, inside the little tent the cloak made, there sat a copper-bottomed saucepan where Jason Funderburker slept, only to give a startled croak and leap away as Greg picked the pot back up and placed it upside-down on his head. "All dressed," he said triumphantly as he came bouncing up to her through the early morning mist, oversized sweater sleeves concealing his hands as he scrabbled at the bag of candy he'd been carrying around since that first night. "Good morning, Beatrice," he said formally, peeking inside the bag with a lofty air. "What can I get you for breakfast on this fine day?"

"Mm." She crouched down to look inside the bag herself. "What about one of those little cookie things?"

"A Crookery?" he asked, pulling out a little silver package which advertised its sheer quantity of chocolate chips as being 'positively criminal.'

"No, the ones with the strawberry in them."

"Okay, but we're running kinda low on those," he said, and handed her another candy which called itself a Straw-very. Beatrice opened the thing and took an eager bite, its sweet crunchy innards dancing on her tongue like happiness itself. Wirt and Sara had long started to complain about eating the foods Greg had in his bag; Beatrice thought they were crazy. She'd never tasted treats like this in all her life, and couldn't imagine growing tired of them.

Sara was still at Wirt's side, now leaned up against the same tree as him. Their bodies were very close, but she didn't touch him. Personally, if Beatrice was in her place she would have been shaking his collar and telling him to wake up already – but what did she know? She was just their tag-along. Wirt was still apparently sleeping, arms folded under his cloak and ankles crossed. Beatrice caught herself staring at his face, and looked quickly away.

Dipper shimmied out from behind a tree and settled his own eyes on Wirt, brows knit. He cleared his throat and Sara and Beatrice both looked up. "Um," he said, and waved a hand vaguely in their direction. "You should. You know. Probably wake him up. Make sure he isn't, uh… Make sure he's okay."

"I'm sure you're very concerned about that," Beatrice said acidly.

Dipper frowned. "Look, I don't _want_ people to get hurt," he argued, rubbing the back of his head where she'd grazed him with the bat the night before. "Nobody tried to kill anyone else while we were all sleeping, which means none of us are _probably_ man-eating monsters or self-interested apocalypse opportunists, and, you know, that's… that's good..."

Mabel popped up next to her brother and took him by the shoulders. "This is Sir Dippingsauce's way of saying he's sorry," she explained, pressing her cheek against his.

"Is not!" he said hotly, and pushed her away. "We had plenty of reason to be suspicious of the motives of a bunch of strangers in a very stressful and resource-limited environment –"

"We forgive you!" Greg said, and threw a handful of candy at Dipper to show it. One hit him above the eye.

"Ow."

"Who're we forgiving?" asked a new voice, muddy with sleep. Wirt had opened his eyes finally, and Beatrice couldn't help feeling a little gratified to see Sara move quickly away as he sat up. "What happened?"

"We're all friends now," Mabel said, and Greg piped up, "Yeah!"

"What," Wirt said flatly as Dipper simultaneously protested, "Well, come on, that's a little premature –"

"Don't try to fight it, boys!" Mabel sat cross-legged on the ground and picked up one of the candies that had bounced off of her brother. "No more bad feelings. This morning, we dine like kings!" Sara and Wirt groaned, but the rest of them dug into the sugary breakfast with vigor. Even Beatrice couldn't pretend to be grumpy about that.

As she ate, though, she kept her eye on the two of them not partaking. Wirt and Sara sat together at the edge of the small clearing, speaking quietly to one another. He still had blood on his face from the night before, and she licked her thumb and wiped at it gently. Sunlight lit up the end of his ridiculous nose; it had always been on the big side, even back when he and Beatrice first met, but it and all of his proportions seemed to have grown only more absurd since then. He had several inches on her now, and stood a good foot taller than Sara; his feet were a tripping hazard and his ears wouldn't have looked out of place on a phonograph. She had never really imagined that a person could change so much in so little time, especially when she compared him to herself - but that, she supposed, was an agony for another day. She looked back at the candy in her hands with troubled thoughts. Her stomach was going queasy.

The time after they'd parted, three years back, had been uneventful for the most part. Life in the Unknown had a very steady way about it, and that showed in how quickly routine had returned to her life once she and her family reacquired their opposable thumbs. The wheel of the year turned slow and steady as ever, river burbling, mill churning, and for longer than she would have liked to admit, she'd kept half an eye on the road running up to the grist mill, wondering if and when she might see a couple of behatted boys marching up the path with a bullfrog on hand. She didn't know where Wirt and Greg called home, but knew they'd see each other again someday; the Unknown knew very few true endings, after all, and they had all the time in the world. She told herself that for a very long time, as she gradually imagined Wirt's odd half-smile and the tunes to Gregory's songs with less and less frequency; her mind went back to helping Mother cook and clean, to helping Father keep the mill gears oiled. Forgetting, it turned out, was a wonderful balm for loneliness's ache. On the rare occasions in autumn when the smell of dry leaves or light rain were inextricable from her memories of a blue cloak and silly red hat, she was able to look back on them with a dispassionate perspective toward her fervor and yearning. They were creatures of the past, but she had the future looming forever before her. She wouldn't be hung up on those who had left her behind. Life, quite simply, went on.

And gone on it had, until the hateful night that she'd gone to sleep warm and safe in bed with her sisters, and woken up cold and damp at a gravestone's foot. She was unsure of what was going on or why it had happened, but since the moment she'd first laid eyes on Wirt as he doubled over a marker with a curse on his breath, she'd been certain that she must be dreaming. The sight of his face was a lightning strike, painful and wide, the years between them suddenly impassably vast. "Beatrice?" he'd said, and it was his voice, but not his visage; not a stubborn kid in a stupid hat like she remembered, but a man older than her now. It was impossible, but here he was anyway, and there she was too, sitting on the ground in her nightgown like an idiot while her oldest friend stared at her like she was a ghost.

And in a way, that was how she'd felt ever since: like a ghost, lost in a living world which she couldn't hope to understand. It wasn't enough that she was confused and wanted answers about where she was – it was that Wirt seemed just as baffled as she was, and far more concerned with keeping Greg within arm's reach at all times than he was with taking time to speak to her openly. It was that he was accompanied by one of the strangest girls Beatrice had ever seen, the selfsame Sara he'd spoken of so fondly in the past, and that she was achingly beautiful in a way that was almost hard to stomach, even beneath the ridiculous paint on her face. It was that Sara had grown quiet when Wirt said Beatrice's name, and looked at her like an exotic animal in a zoo: "You're Beatrice?" she'd whispered, as if coming face-to-face with a notorious villain, and Beatrice didn't know how to respond to that. What had Wirt said about her that could provoke such a reaction?

And Greg had started chattering to her about something nonsensical and Wirt and Sara had started talking, half-arguing, about what they needed to do, what this meant, what in heaven and hell had happened, and Beatrice was just left there sitting with her back to a tombstone, numb and overwhelmed and a little angry at herself for feeling so incredibly distressed. Three years she'd had dreams about what it could be like to see the brothers again one day, about what a reunion they might have when Wirt came marching back up the path to the mill door in his same old hat and cloak, as unchanged as everything else in her life. Their reconciliation should have been something wonderful, not a moment of fear and uncertainty laid bare for everyone to see, and the pain of it throbbed to this day. She thought that she and Wirt had parted ways as friends, once upon a time; now, when he looked at her with his perpetually-concerned eyes, she could only feel that she was a symptom of some great disruption in his life, not a victim suffering it alongside him. In the morning sunlight, Beatrice stared down at the silvery pink candy wrapper in her hands and felt its sugar turn bitter in her mouth. Greg offered her another, but she suddenly wasn't hungry anymore.

She'd been walking with the brothers again for three full days now, and it seemed as though she and Wirt had barely spoken to one another beyond what was necessary, like he didn't know what to say to her, like he still didn't fully believe she could be there with him. Sara, of all people, was almost more accommodating, regularly taking time to ask polite questions and having offered her from her home a pair of walking shoes and the wooden bat (which Beatrice had since privately named after her dog, for its pleasant appearance and ability to pack a wallop when necessary) – but Sara too seemed to regard her as an impossibility that might collapse under the weight of heavy scrutiny, and maintained a noticeable distance. Greg was the only one who acted as she could have hoped, like no time had passed between them, but she only understood a small portion of everything he said. Things about tellyvisions, and star wars, and school friends of his whom she didn't know and didn't care about. This place looked so like the Unknown, but somehow she felt far more a stranger in it than any of the others, cut out of her companions' collective past and floating timelessly alongside them. She was an alien in her own world.

And she would never say so to anybody else, but damned if it didn't hurt.

She saw that Wirt was finally making to stand up, and watched him stealthily out of the corner of her eye. His legs were clearly stiff and weak and he leaned heavily on the tree behind him, but he didn't pass out and didn't look any more affected than usual, so she considered his prognosis good, probably. The crow had told her to keep an eye on him, 'her' Pilgrim, but he hadn't done much in the last few days to inspire that sort of loyalty or possessiveness, so she wasn't sure why she should care. He could keep his own ass out of the fire from here on.

Greg turned when he saw his brother. "Are you okay, Wirt?" the little boy asked, standing up.

"Yeah, I think so," Wirt said, taking another step forward with a hand against his temple. He winced. Dipper seemed to be avoiding his eyes, and ate a caramel with his gaze resolutely on the fire pit. There was a palpable discomfort in the air that Beatrice bitterly wished someone would break. She was so terribly tired of awkward silences, but still too ill-tempered to make her own attempt at playing nice. The birds that she had been working hard to ignore were starting to chirp ever more excitedly in the trees above them. _"The teeth!"_ they said. _"The teeth are coming!"_ Beatrice couldn't help looking upward. They were still saying that same thing. What on earth did it mean?

"So," Wirt said finally as he sat down next to Greg, still holding his head. "I guess we're really doing this, huh?" He sounded terribly resigned.

"Sure are," Mabel said cheerfully. "Gravity Falls, ho!" She lifted a fist into the air and looked around. Nobody responded to her enthusiasm, but Sara offered her a small smile.

Dipper chewed on the inside of his lip and finally grabbed a stick to begin scrawling a picture in the dirt. "Alright," he said, "then the plan for today is just to keep going due north as well as we can." Beatrice felt like she could hardly hear him over the birds' hysterical chorus. "I have a compass that should keep us in the right direction -"

"North?" Wirt asked. He looked like he thought he must have misheard, while the birds kept screeching, _"The teeth, the teeth!"_ Beatrice squared her jaw.

Dipper looked up at him, equally unsure. "Uh, yeah?"

Sara spoke up as well. "I'm pretty sure we need to go west, actually," she said, voice very carefully polite. Beatrice dug a finger in her ear in the hopes that it might clear up her hearing.

 _"The teeth, the teeth!"_

"Well I - technically it's sort of a northwest-ish direction, I suppose, but –"

 _"The teeth, the teeth, the teeth –"_

"I mean, though, don't – don't you mean _south_ westish –?" Wirt said. He looked torn between his desire not to ruffle any feathers and his clear want to assert himself against someone who had handily assaulted him and had yet to apologize for it. "'Cause I'm, you know, _really_ sure it's more southwest to get to –"

Dipper's brow creased a little bit. "I don't know how to properly explain how much sense that doesn't make –"

 _"THE TEETH, THE TEETH, THE TEETH –"_

And Beatrice blurted out, "Shut _UP,"_ unable to help herself. The birds paid her no heed, but the rest of the group did, and she found five sets of eyes drawn to her as she clapped her hands over her ears. _Stupid goddamn birds,_ she thought angrily, face turning red. She looked past her companions toward the deep of the woods, determined not to justify herself, but as her eyes locked on a faraway shape through the morning mist the birdsong went quiet all at once, and the unexpected silence dropped a cold shiver down her spine. Everyone else noticed the same, but they all looked upward, while she still had her eyes trained on the foggy distance. She squinted, and then froze. The bottom dropped out of her stomach. "Shut up because -" She licked her dry lips. "Because I think those things can hear us."

Everyone turned to follow her gaze. Some several hundred yards away in the thick morning gloom there slunk a shape between the trees, unidentifiable but distinct. It was hunched and bristled, smaller than a bear but far bigger than any of them were prepared to deal with. It passed between two trees and was followed by another, and more behind them. Momentarily, a hushed howl went up from a far distance, thin and strident. It sounded distinctly lupine.

Beatrice turned back to her companions with her heart in her throat. They looked as anxious as she felt.

"Whichever direction we're going," she said, "please just tell me it's away from those things."

Dipper looked at his sister, while Wirt put a hand on Greg's shoulder and bade him to stand. There was no camp for them to break, and they did no more to argue about compass directions; the birds were still silent in the trees as the group stood up and began walking away without a sound, their first morning together outlined by the sort of shared, unspoken fear that was, in Beatrice's experience, the basis for most relationships.

Maybe this alliance wasn't going to be entirely artificial after all.

–

The day grew bright and rounder as six bodies trudged through the deep of the woods, silent, but watching their surroundings very closely. Progress was slow in the thick underbrush and the terrain was treacherously uneven, but nobody complained; the long trek was more than form of habit by this point. Morning turned leisurely to early afternoon on the beat of their footfalls, the forest was full to the brim with birdsong and the heady smells of cedar and moss, and Mabel was falling behind the group just because she wanted a little more time to take it all in. She stopped while the rest of them moved ahead and lifted her chin into a sunbeam, quietly worshipping the warmth on her face. She knew it couldn't be a coincidence that this strange world's first real moment of peace and beauty stood in line with her and Dipper having made new friends. They might not _think_ they were friends yet, but give it time. Mabel had never failed to eventually cotton with anyone, and that was even before she was only one of a half-dozen people in the whole world left to socialize with.

"Mabel!" Dipper called from a dozen yards north, gesturing at her to move up with him. "Hurry up. We have no idea what might be out here."

"Aah, you worrywart," she called back, sticking a tongue out at him. _"You_ oughta slow down and smell the flowers a little!"

 _"Seriously,"_ her brother emphasized, and began to walk back toward her. "I think those were wolves we saw back at the campsite. They'll pick off any stragglers they can find if they're following us." He held out a hand.

There were no further sounds of danger from the woods around, and had not been for hours. Mabel pulled a face, but conceded to take her twin's hand and catch up. The canopy up ahead was thin, and through it golden lances of sunlight poured thickly to the ground, turning green and brown alike to brilliant white. Mabel could viscerally feel the group's tension slowly evaporate like mist from the earth. She reveled in it, hunched her shoulders up and shivered, gave herself congratulatory hugs that finally, _finally_ people were at least a little bit at peace. Or most of them, anyway. The tall boy called Wirt had a troubled expression on his face as he worked to keep pace with his much slower little brother.

Mabel sidled up to the two of them expectantly. Greg waved at her, and lifted one of his frog's forelegs to wave as well. "Heyy," she said as she fell into step with them. Wirt looked startled, having not seemed to notice her drawing close. "You alright, friend? Lookin' a little upset over here."

"Me?" he asked, apparently surprised she was talking to him. She looked around to see if anyone else was near, and gave him a self-evident shrug. "Oh. No. I'm fine. Just, uh… No, I'm fine."

"Wirt _hates_ it when people say worrywart," Greg piped up from next to his brother's knees.

Wirt started to say, "Greg…"

"Oh. Did someone say that?" Mabel asked, tilting her head at him.

Wirt turned a little pink, and Greg said in his stead, "You did, just now."

"Aw, man," Mabel straightened back up and kicked at a pinecone like a soccer ball. "I'm sorry. I didn't know it bothered you. I won't do it again."

"'Cause it sounds too much like his name and sometimes people tease–" Greg started to clarify further, but Wirt finally put a hand on top of his copper-bottomed head and said, "Okay, _shush."_

"Aah, I get it," Mabel said, and made an attempt to fling a sympathetic arm around Wirt's shoulder, though this turned out not to work so well given their height difference. She had to jump to make the reach. "Y'know," she added, withdrawing the arm and tapping her chin pensively as she contemplated an opportunity to try and mend last night's wounds, "if trouble with weird names is your game, you really oughta talk to Dipper. He knows your pain, I promise." Dipper shot her a concerned look when he heard his name spoken. "I bet you and him have a lot in common, actually, you know? Maybe you should chill sometime and just kinda..." She circled her hands, open-palmed, a few times, and then slipped her fingers together. "...talk it out. Ya know?"

"Mabel," Dipper said, pulling his mouth to the side with a doubtful look.

"Look, I've gotta _try,_ alright?" she responded, stopping again and dropping her arms dramatically. Everyone stopped walking to look. "I can't stand it when everyone's mad at each other, Dip. You especially."

Greg said, "I'm not mad."

"See this kid here?" Mabel asked, taking one of Greg's arms and lifting it into the air. "This kid gets it. He's not mad. Can't we all be like Greg here?"

"Wearing saucepans on our heads?" Dipper asked dryly.

"It's not a saucepan," Greg said with infinite patience. "I have a metal head, because I'm a _robot,_ because it's _Halloween_. Puh-lease."

"It hasn't been Halloween for a few days now, Greg," Sara said kindly. "You can see why the poor man would be confused."

But Greg said, very equitably, "No, it's still Halloween." His brother gave him a little look that told him to be quiet, but the kid continued, "I mean, the last time we went into the Unknown it was for weeks and weeks, but it still never stopped being Halloween the whole time, so -"

Mabel looked at her brother with pursed lips; he was wearing an expression very much like hers. "What's the unknown?" she asked, stepping forward with an eyebrow raised at the elementary schooler. "You said something about it last night, too."

Greg started to say, "It's -"

"A _really_ long story," Wirt interrupted, bending down to give Greg a little push and get him walking again. "A, uh - kid's thing. Made up. Hard to explain. Something for another day." He gave Sara a pointed look and she raised her hands plaintively. "We should just go."

"But Wirt," the child protested.

"No, he's right," said Dipper, who looked even jumpier than usual. "I really want to keep moving. We've got a long way to go and only a fraction of the supplies needed to get there, so we shouldn't waste any time." Wirt gave him a grateful look, but Dipper didn't appear to be watching him. They all began moving again, tromping carefully through the deep sea of sword ferns and cedar mulch – all of them but Beatrice, who stood stationary and watched Wirt's slow withdrawal with a hard expression, and clear hurt in her eyes. He glanced back at her once before looking quickly away, and alarm bells went off in Mabel's head. She sidled up next to the tall redhead with a grin and began talking, anything to keep the mood light.

"Sooo," she said casually, examining the shine on her fingernails and trying hard to make like their conversation was not being precipitated by the fear that people would start arguing again. "How was _your_ Halloween this year? Aside from the part where the world ended."

Beatrice tore her eyes from Wirt and looked down at Mabel, who, at five-foot-six, was still a good few inches shorter than her. She said, "I don't understand the question."

"Oh. Um, okay?" Mabel rubbed the back of her head as the two of them started to walk together, slightly separated from the rest. "If you say so." She chewed on the inside of her lip and decided to try a different tack. "You know, it's really nice of you and your friends to –"

"They're not my friends."

Once again, Mabel was caught off-guard. "Oh. You… Didn't you all come from the same place together? Aberdale?"

"I'm not from Aberdale," Beatrice said stiffly, staring straight ahead with her bat slung over her shoulder. Her coolness was intimidating. "I don't even know where that is."

"Oh." Mabel let her hands fall limp at her sides. "I thought you all knew each other."

"We did," Beatrice said. She was looking at Wirt again. "Or most of us did. But we're not friends." There was a twitch in her freckled jaw. "I used to think we were, but I was wrong."

Mabel was starting to feel like she'd wandered out of her depth. She pushed forward with, "Well, I just wanted to say that it's really nice of you and your fr– you and your group, to let us come with you. And share your food. After we attacked you and all. Because we did. And, uh –" she bounced a little on the balls of her feet "– if any of your people don't think you're a good friend, you should tell 'em they're crazy. 'Cause I got a real good view when you came in with that bat last night, and I'd be lucky to have someone who'd defend my life like that."

"Your brother wouldn't?" Beatrice asked. She stopped and turned up to the trees. A particularly harsh birdcall sounded, and a frown crossed her face. Mabel was struck by the shape of her, standing in a sunbeam, loose nightdress billowing slightly away from her thin form. The dress looked curiously old, the fabric a rough weave, the seams hand-stitched. It certainly _seemed_ like part of a Halloween costume.

"He would," Mabel admitted.

"Well, there you go," Beatrice said flippantly, and tossed the bat up into the air with a little spin. "It's not so special."

"That's the kind of thing siblings _have_ to do for each other," Mabel insisted. "It's not the same and – and that's not the point, anyway. I just wanna say –" She hoisted her elbow up onto the other girl's shoulder with an effort "– _I'd_ sure be your friend, if these dopes can't appreciate you."

And Beatrice turned to look at her, sunlight gold on her wild hair and a slightly crumpled expression on her face. She opened her mouth to say something and then stopped. "I don't really do friends," she said, and crossed her arms across her chest in a defensive gesture.

"Okay," Mabel said understandingly. "You can't stop me from liking you, though." The taller girl offered her a half-smile paired with skeptical brows. "Especially your hair. Would it be weird if I asked to touch your hair?"

Beatrice thought about it for a minute. "No," she said finally, and reached up to pull out the blue scrunchie that kept it piled atop her head. The coppery locks fell in a heap around her shoulders and Mabel made a noise of awe.

"So _pretty,"_ she whispered as she ran her fingers over and through the curls.

"I hate it," Beatrice said.

"Noo!" Mabel insisted. "I hate _my_ hair, it's so brown and boring."

"But easy to comb, I'll bet."

A voice called, _"Mabel!"_ and the two of them looked up to where Dipper stood distantly between the trees. "Come on!"

"Pity us for not listening to your brother before," Beatrice said dryly. "Now we're gonna get eaten by wolves."

But Mabel said, "Naah," and began steering both of them to catch up with the group. "Wolves go after lone stragglers, don't they? And we're not alone."

Beatrice looked away from her. Mabel liked to think it was because she didn't want anyone to see her smiling. They didn't speak again, but walked for a very long time together through the breathing woods, and however slow they went, neither let the other fall behind.

–

No matter how he tried, Dipper couldn't quite get himself to relax. Half his mind was occupied by the quiet voice in his head (always sounding a lot like Mabel's) which told him to calm down, accept that he was in good company, and enjoy the scenery a bit; the other half was exhausted by the impending sense of doom which had dogged him more or less constantly for upwards of five years now. He kept half an eye on the others, the brothers with the weird clothes being in the middle and Mabel and Bat-Crazy Beatrice taking up the lead. He and Sara walked close to one another at the front, and he thought the arrangement a good one. The girl had a serene air about her, rational and self-possessed. He barely knew her, but could tell she was a rock, and a rock was exactly what he needed right now.

Over the last few days, walking had turned from a halfway-enjoyable pastime, to an excruciating chore, to a numb automated process. Dipper couldn't feel the pain in his legs anymore, though it was always there when he woke in the morning and laid down to sleep at the end of the day; his whole lower body might as well have been made of clockwork for how robotic each step was, clunking along through the underbrush on a mechanical wind. The ache of the backpack on his shoulders came in waves each time his mind settled on it; Mabel would certainly have offered to trade it for her much lighter one had he asked, but she was smaller than him, and it would be even more of a burden on her, so he shouldered the straps up once again and muscled through the pain. Mabel seemed convinced they'd left any danger behind at the campsite, but Dipper couldn't shake the unfounded sense that they were being followed. Every once in a while he thought he heard something sounding from the trees around, like a muffled voice very far away, but it always eluded his full focus.

"Do you hear that?" he asked Sara once. She cocked her head at him with a curious expression that clearly said no, so he just shrugged and let it drop.

Afternoon bled into itself. The air warmed and the light grew rich and low. The landscape here all looked the same: trees, trees, and more trees, with a lot of moss sprinkled across the top for flavor. It was impossible to tell how far they had traveled today (ten miles? Twelve?), but they were definitely going slower than they had when it was only him and Mabel. Dipper tried to tell himself it was a reasonable tradeoff for safety in numbers, and that helped a little bit, but that rationale still stood defiantly in the face of his nasty feeling that he and his sister should have taken off in the middle of the night and left these strangers to their own devices. _You can't trust them,_ he thought, and tried to shake it away as fast as it came. _You're better off alone._ These weren't really his thoughts. It was the anxiety talking. Things were going to be okay.

Mabel believed it, after all, and he had to be willing to trust her. She was his seeing-eye dog for this sort of thing.

"Do you think that's what we've been hearing at night?" Sara asked unexpectedly. Dipper did a double take as he looked up at her. She was staring at the forest floor that passed slowly under their feet.

"Huh?" he asked astutely.

"The howling every night," she said. She looked up, mouth twisted behind the skull makeup. "Could it be coming from wolves like we saw earlier?"

"Oh. I don't know." Dipper kicked mindlessly at a small rock in his path and furrowed his brows. "I've been thinking that the sounds at night might be something… different. Kinda…" He waved his hands and muttered, "'parasupernortural.' I guess. But that's not a word. I mean, they're always so close, but you never hear anything move. You never _see_ anything." He shot her an awkward glance. "That is, if you can, uh… believe that sort of thing."

Sara shrugged listlessly. "I'd believe anything after the last few days I've had," she said. "Now I almost wish it _was_ wolves. At least then you'd know what you're dealing with."

"I know the feeling." Dipper mentally flipped through the yellowed pages of three handwritten journals, which he hadn't seen in five years, looking for something which might match the description of those screaming shadows. Nothing. "I always kind of liked it, though. Dealing with the unknown."

"You've done a lot of that?"

"I used to, until –" He shrugged. "I was just a kid. Dangerous stuff never really sinks in when you're that young."

"Ah. I know what you mean." Independently, they raised their eyes to the trees and walked in silence again. Dipper felt a little calmer already. Sure, he hadn't lost that feeling of being watched, and he still kept hearing voices from far off, but that was nothing. He just needed some normal conversation with like-minded individuals. They were all perfectly normal people. They could trust each other.

"Dip!" Mabel called from behind. Dipper turned around and shielded his eyes from the low sun. His sister had stopped and was pointing off to the east. "There's another one!" Curiosity piqued, he followed her gaze. Nestled between the trees was a low cottage, slumping beneath the weight of the needles and leaves on its roof.

"Come on!" Mabel said as she dashed past Wirt and Greg. "Fourth time's the charm, Bro-bro!"

"There _are_ buildings out here?!" Beatrice asked incredulously.

"A few," Dipper said as they drew closer together to watch Mabel scout around the base of the sagging hut. "They're all empty. I don't know where they came from."

Beatrice had a very odd look on her face. "I've gotta see this," she said under her breath, and Sara followed close behind, leaving Dipper, Wirt, and Greg standing alone on their path. The two older boys made brief eye contact and then looked away.

"Do you, uh… wanna go look, Greg?" Wirt asked.

"Really?" The boy looked up at his brother. "You aren't gonna tell me it's too dangerous or something?"

"Absolutely everything is dangerous right now," Wirt deadpanned. His tone was light, but there was something unspeakably weary underneath it. "No reason _not_ to poke around the cool old building. Just be smart about it." The boy shrugged and followed the others happily. When he was gone, Wirt looked up and tried to say something at the exact same moment that Dipper spoke.

"This isn't the first time this has –"

"I just wanted to say I was s–"

And they both stopped. They looked away. Dipper swallowed. _You can't trust them,_ the voice in his head repeated, and he stolidly ignored it.

"Look," he started again, and Wirt turned back. "I wanted to say I – I'm sorry for what happened last night." He rubbed self-consciously at the back of his head, still bruised. "It was rough. I overreacted. A-and I'm sorry you got hurt. You and your brother seem like good people." He meant most of it, but couldn't shake the feeling that if they _had_ been ne'er-do-wells after all, he would have been very glad to act decisively.

"Oh. Th-thanks." Wirt fiddled with his hands under the weird cloak he wore. Dipper kept wanting to ask what costume it was supposed to be a part of, but the time never seemed quite right. " It's o– well, it's not really _okay,_ I mean, my head still hurts a lot, but I guess I can't – can't blame you for being jumpy. These woods are even weirder than they used to be."

"Used to be?" Dipper asked, but Wirt ignored him. The taller boy raised his head so that his prominent nose cut across the mass of the trees around, and he said, "I keep feeling like I'm being watched. I don't know where it's coming from."

Dipper's heart caught in his throat, but he crossed his arms coolly and croaked, "Oh. Th-that's pretty weird." He hoped his expression didn't betray him, but he all of a sudden felt quite wrong-footed. Something far away whispered his name again, bouncing off the trees from no direction and all of them. His neck prickled. Both young men looked at one another for a minute longer until Dipper abruptly broke away and started to walk toward the cottage where most of their group had already congregated. A pool of molten dread bubbled in his stomach, but he did his best to ignore it; in a fit of denial, he swung around the corner of the building and called, "Mabel?"

"In here, Dipper." Mabel's voice floated from inside the doorless entrance. "It's even creepier than the others we found!" He ducked inside as Wirt came up behind him. The interior was awash in heavy gray light, untouched by the sun. It was more of a shack than the buildings he and Mabel had seen before, having only a single room and a cold hearth in the far wall, but seemed more structurally sound as well. Its ceiling support beams looked solid, at least. Mabel and Sara picked through the spare debris on the floor, while Beatrice swept the dusty mantle with her hand. The remains of a cooking spit were collapsed across the firebricks, and a rotten table lay upside-down against the south wall. A violent shiver went down Dipper's spine as he looked at it. He wasn't sure it had anything to do with the table.

"What are we looking for?" Greg asked from next to the hut's single grimy window.

"Food, mostly," Mabel said. She kicked at the cooking spit, but predictably there was no bread hiding underneath. Wirt ducked a little and became the last one to enter the shack.

And as he did, Dipper felt suddenly like he might be sick.

Cold fearful nausea hit him like a wave, inexplicable and overwhelming. This was nowhere near the sort of weakly paranoid fantasy that fueled most of his anxieties; it was certain, and hard, and very very real. He reeled slightly and leaned against the wooden wall. "Dipper?" someone asked, their voice fading in his ears. "Are you alright?" He couldn't answer; his jaw felt loose.

As his view of the dirt floor shrunk with darkness pushing at the edges, someone grabbed his shoulders. Mabel. His perception filtered wildly through all its possible avenues of elucidation, hearing, sight, smell, looking for a channel by which he could fully interpret this terrible dread, but none of them fit; it was some sixth sense, bone-deep and undeniable. Something was wrong. Something terrible was going to happen, and they needed to _leave._

"Go," he croaked, trying to stand up as his head whirled. "We need to get out of here, _go –"_

But he'd taken too long to collect himself. Something in the woods outside of the shack thumped, and a branch cracked, and every one of the group grew silent. Beatrice tightened her grip on her bat, and Wirt instinctively reached for Greg's hand. For a second there was nothing; and then from the other side of the thin wall, only feet away, rose a sound, high and rasping, almost with a laugh in its breath, like it couldn't believe they could really be so incredibly stupid. Three others followed it, and their shadows fell across the entryway like creepers, inching forward to take them all in hand.

All day long, Dipper had had the feeling that they were being followed, and because he wanted to believe it wasn't true, he'd allowed them to enter a small building with only a single exit and nowhere to hide. Stupid, stupid, _stupid._ He reached out blindly and placed a shaking hand on Mabel's shoulder, and with the other, withdrew his knife. If he died for this mistake, it would be for the sake of protecting her from it.

"Stay behind me," was all he had time to say to his sister before a great hunched shape entered the doorway, mottled in silhouette, and snarling like a wolf.

* * *

 **So here you see the introduction of one of my weirder OTGW headcanons: that Beatrice can talk to birds, and hates it. I like to think the rest of her family retained this ability as well, and now the mill house is just pretty much constantly surrounded by birds of all shapes and sizes, flying freely in the windows, chatting friendly-like with her parents and siblings, roosting in the attic during wintertime, and Beatrice is the only one who thinks this is completely insane while everyone else is like "yo I guess we're the bird family now." That white crow seems like a pretty strange character, dunn'he? Ahh, I bet we're never gonna see him again...**

 **Remember that you can always shoot me a message at whiggitymacabee. tumblr. com!**


	5. A Promise to the Edelwood

5

Sometimes, it was hard being eight. Those extra loops in the numeral had come with a lot of new responsibilities for Greg, like learning how to use the washing machine, or being allowed to ride his bike across town without Wirt, or having to be the one who cleaned Jason Funderburker's tank every week from now on. It was a little overwhelming at first, but he enjoyed being treated like a grown-up by his family and peers. He was no longer a child who needed to be taken care of and watched over, but an _agent_ (that was his dad's word), capable of being his own man; holding responsibilities meant that, for the first time in his life, people could rely on him for things in the same way he relied on them.

And ever since Halloween night, he had been coming to realize that the thing people relied on him for the very most was his good mood.

Greg was a _happy kid,_ that was what people always said. He liked that. He'd always found it better and easier to smile than frown, and normally he lived by that principle, but at some point he'd started to understand that the way a person usually was was the way people always expected them to be, and that was easier said than done. One time, he'd come home from school bad-tempered because Bo Cummings had pushed him into Mandy Snodgrass on the playground and _he_ was the one who got in trouble for it, but when his dad heard the story, he'd only given him a look and said, "I'm surprised you let that get to you, Squirt." For others, he realized, his moodiness was worrying and confusing, and that wasn't a way he wanted the people he cared about to feel. Ever since, he'd done his best to be sure he could always make light of things when they were dark. It was the first grown-up responsibility he had that he'd given to himself. Sometimes it was hard work, but he liked that he could do it. He was Greg the Cheerful.

It wasn't a hard job, usually – but it would be a lie if he said that these last few days hadn't been difficult, on him as much as anyone. He'd grown up a lot since the first time he and Wirt visited, and it was a rock fact that his glasses just weren't as rosy as they had used to be. Back in the day, the forest had seemed a much friendlier place, at least from what he remembered, which to tell the truth wasn't much; his memories of the Unknown were less distinct, and more just a big shining spot in the past that made him feel warm to think about. Now, though, his vision was very clear, and the hard truth was that these new woods were completely absent the folk-tale, all-will-be-well feeling that he remembered so fondly. Instead, he and his big brother had just spent a lot of time here being very hungry, and cold, and exhausted when they couldn't sleep because of the noises out in the trees every night. Greg was thrilled to see Beatrice again, but things felt different somehow than they'd used to now that she was a person, not a bluebird. That Sara could come with them this time was fantastic, but he wasn't blind to the fact that there was a bad edge to everything Beatrice said to her and everything Wirt said to Beatrice in turn. This wasn't right, this wasn't how things had gone at all when he'd written stories about revisiting the Unknown for Mom and Dad. It felt too terribly _real._

He couldn't express that, though, because for him to acknowledge the bad stuff would upset everyone, and that simply would not do. So he pretended that he didn't sorely, achingly miss his mom and dad; pretended not to be hungry when he was, nearly all the time; acted like he didn't ever notice the looks that the big kids kept shooting at each other. If it were up to him, he'd make everyone forgive and forget, but in the end, he was just a kid, and the best he could do was keep his chin up and hope that the others followed suit.

This determination had been tested a lot over the last few days, but never so much as the moment that the big wolf-shape stepped in front of the house's doorway to block their way out, and began to speak.

"Good afternoon, rabbits," it drawled at them, black lips stretching past its teeth like a rubber band. Pitchy liquid leaked from the corners of its mouth and eyes as it panted, and two of its fellows drew up on either side of it in the doorway, pressing their faces and shoulders eagerly into the building. Its back was big and hunched up like a hyena's, and it looked bigger than the wolves Greg had once seen in the zoo, but in all other ways it seemed just like something that would eat three pigs in a sitting, wicked grin and yellow eyes and all. Greg wondered if he should have been surprised that it spoke English, but maybe the really strange thing was that it had taken them _this_ long to find a talking animal in the Unknown.

From somewhere behind Greg, Sara breathed, _"The hell…?"_

"T-talking wolves, eh?" Dipper asked. His face was sweaty and his voice broke, but he stepped more solidly in front of his sister, spreading his hands out to the sides in a protective way. "Yeah, alright. I've dealt with your sort before."

"Listen to it, sister," cackled the wolf at the left side of the door. Its ruff of fur was bunched up close to its head as it strained to push inside. "It thinks it knows _our sort!"_

"I would gladly let it know more," said the one on the other side, licking its chops. "About my teeth, and tongue, and the inside of my belly…"

"Gross," Greg said, putting his hands on his hips. "Don't be rude." Wirt silently pushed his little brother's saucepan-hat down over his eyes, the best way he had to tell him to be quiet. Greg got the message, but wasn't really feeling it. Who did these wolves think they were?

"We are willing to strike a deal, rabbits," hissed the first wolf, flattening its ears against its skull. "Give us your two smallest, and the other four may walk away. To kill too much is wasteful." Its eyes lingered on Greg for a moment before sliding over to Sara with a hungry look. He felt his stomach drop. These wolves wanted to _eat_ her. What a horrible thought.

"Not a damn chance," Beatrice said, stepping up next to Dipper with her hands on the bat they'd pulled from Sara's overgrown garage four nights past.

"Hey Dipper," Mabel said, popping her head up over her brother's shoulder, "what did the journals say about killing magical evil wolves, again?"

"Pretty sure you've gotta do it the old fashioned way, Mabel," Dipper said, not taking his eyes off of their adversaries, and adjusting his grip on his knife. "Make 'em bleed."

"Brave buck," sneered the leftmost wolf, and with that word it slipped in the doorway to slink along the wall, along with its siblings. "You won't be so mouthy after I rip it off." Greg felt hair prickle on the back of his neck as the older kids all shrunk in toward one another, with him at almost the very center. Jason Funderburker poked his head out of his sweater and gave him a worried look, but didn't croak. He was a good frog.

"What do you say, rabbits?" asked the first, still standing solidly in the doorway and bristling with anticipation. "Two for four. Nobody who isn't food need get hurt. Fair as fair can be."

"Never," Wirt said, squaring his stance in front of Greg.

"Yeah," said Mabel, and she raised her chin defiantly. "Not in a million years."

"As you say, then," the first wolf said loftily, and the others chuckled and licked their lips. Beatrice braced herself, and Dipper raised his knife.

"Sisters!" it barked. "Whet your teeth on their –"

And then the wolf's command was superseded by a much louder, _"No,"_ growled from outside the building. The three within immediately cowered and bowed where they stood as a new shadow fell across the entryway. A fourth wolf, almost half again as large as the others, shouldered impatiently through the doorway and shoved aside the one that had been speaking for the rest. It had green eyes and a black muzzle, like it had dipped its nose in ink.

"Sisters," it said, glaring at its fellows not unlike the way Wirt sometimes did at Greg. "I am very disappointed in you."

"And I am very _hungry,"_ snarled the one which had been closest to approaching Sara.

"This is not the way of the game," glowered the new wolf, spreading its forelegs threateningly and eyeing each of the others in their turn. "Bullying and belittling, and trying to strike bargains. You are mannerless pups." The other wolves bared their teeth, but did not challenge it.

Then the big wolf's eyes flickered up to their group, and it blinked at them languidly. "You must forgive my sisters," it said as it sat down in the doorway, and swept its huge tail across the ground. It seemed to be looking right at Dipper. "They are young, and impatient. They would ignore the rules of engagement for the sake of their empty bellies."

"F-forgiveness, schmorgiveness," Mabel said, ducking under Dipper's outstretched arm and storming forward. Greg thought it was pretty brave of her to do that. Her fists were curled up, but he could see that they were shaking. When she stood face-to-face with the wolf, its nose was almost level with hers. "They were just about to eat us! They got all _explicit_ about it." She shot a nasty look at the wolf nearest to her, which narrowed its eyes in turn. "I for one am not ready to play nice with _any_ of you."

Beatrice said, "And I don't like being threatened," and she stepped forward next to Mabel and put her hands on her hips. "Shove your politeness and get outta here. I don't want to see you again."

The alpha wolf looked unimpressed. "I'm sorry," it said, perking its ears forward. "You seem to be under the impression that my disruption means we will not eat you. That is not true." Greg could feel Wirt grow very still. He tried to pat his thigh reassuringly. "But tradition says that travelers are entitled to more than to be ambushed past a threshold. You will not die today."

"Gee, th-that's comforting," Wirt tittered up above him. If it was supposed to be a joke, it wasn't a very good one, which meant it suited his big brother perfectly.

"You can't threaten us," Dipper said.

"Not a threat," sneered the wolf which had been the first to speak to them. "A promise."

 _"Hush."_ The big one turned to it, and the smaller shrunk down like a child. "But she is right," the alpha continued as it looked back up, eyes half-lidded. "Hungry as we may be, this is no simple pursuit between wolf and rabbit. It is a promise to the Edelwood."

"'Edelwood'?" Dipper whispered sidelong to his sister. "Ever heard of this guy?" Mabel shrugged, but Greg felt very cold all of a sudden and Beatrice whispered, _"Shit."_ Wirt usually got mad at people for saying bad words in front of his brother, but this time, he didn't say anything at all.

Slowly, the wolf stood again and bowed in a long stretch. Its scary green eyes were like lanterns and it took a minute to look at each of them. "These are the terms," it announced, and turned back toward the door. The rest of the pack bristled. "Tomorrow, you will see us again. I cannot tell you where, or when. You may run as fast as you can, or stay in your place. It will make no difference." Dipper looked like he wanted to jump forward and have at it, but the other wolves were watching very closely. Wirt's face was blank, while Sara's was hard to read because of the makeup, but she seemed paler than usual. "You will be hunted, and new bones will take root in the winter soil and grow strong. This is the way of things."

It cast a glance at the other wolves and, wordlessly, they slunk forward, huddling near its feet. "That we are speaking, here and now, is the game's opening move. Its close will be that either the whole of you die, or the whole of us." The three smaller wolves growled. "I warn you, though: My sisters and I have never lost." It sauntered out of the building and the long shadows of afternoon banded across its back. The others followed behind more slowly, giving the group evil looks as they retreated. In a spot of sunlight beyond the doorway, the big wolf turned back. The black fur on its nose looked shiny, like an oil slick.

"Enjoy this night, rabbits," it said to them. "It will likely be your last."

The wolves' gazes lingered, but one by one, they turned and sloped toward the treeline, and then began sprinting until they were disappeared. No one moved for a very long time, until four howls took up from far away, so faint they could have been singing birds. Greg felt like the air had gotten heavy and hot, and it hurt his throat to swallow.

And then Beatrice turned to Sara. Her voice sounded shaky and mad as she said, "You could have stopped them."

Sara looked dumbfounded. "Me?" she asked, stepping backward a little. "What?"

"You have a _pistol,"_ Beatrice continued. She stepped past Greg and he wanted to put out a hand to touch her, but didn't move. "You should have gotten one of those things in the face before they even came in. Hit them in the back on their way out. _Something."_

"I don't –" Sara wasn't looking at her. Her arms were crossed tightly and her eyes were on the floor.

"Those things are going to hunt and eat us! Why didn't you _–_?!"

"Beatrice, leave her alone," Wirt said, reaching out to put a hand on her shoulder, but she shrugged him away.

"I'm _so_ _sorry,"_ Sara said, voice becoming very high-pitched. It was the first time she'd ever responded in kind when Beatrice got snappy. "I guess I was put a little off my game by the _talking wolves!_ "

"Oh, as if you've never seen a talking animal before."

"Beatrice, seriously, that's enough," Wirt said, at the same time that Dipper raised his hands and said, "Wait, _you've_ dealt with the supernatural too?" Greg stepped away slowly. People were starting to argue, _again._ Why didn't they understand this this was the very worst time to be mad at each other? Jason Funderburker nuzzled against his cheek.

Sara was normally almost as happy as Greg, but right now she seemed almost the most upset of all of them. "I can't believe this," she said, turning away so that her hair fell in front of her face. She sounded kind of stuffed-up. "I can't believe how _normal_ you can all act about this. I've been trying so hard just not to freak out for _days_ , and then, Here! Have some talking wolves! And the rest of you just –" She threw up her hands. "No big deal, right? _'I've dealt with your sort before!'_ What does that even _mean?"_

"Sara," Wirt said, and put his hands on her shoulders. His voice was low. He sounded like he used to, sometimes, back when they were boyfriend and girlfriend and his bedroom door was closed. "You didn't – I mean, you knew about the Unknown –"

"I knew about schools for animals and cursed bluebirds, Wirt," she said, and scrubbed at her eyes with the sleeve of her jacket. Beatrice looked away. "Not about this."

"No, okay, listen," Dipper said then, and stepped forward, sheathing his knife and raising his hands. "There it is again, see? The Unknown again. You said that wasn't anything."

"That's because he's a _jackass,"_ Beatrice spat.

"Beatrice, _don't say that in front of Greg!"_ Wirt cried, and he turned to look at her fully. They were the two tallest out of them all, standing in the center of the shack and glaring at one another openly, like there was no one else around. "You know, you were always mean, but this is really something else."

Beatrice looked like she'd been slapped. "Y-you think _you_ have the high ground here?" she asked incredulously, standing on her toes to match his height, like she wanted make a point. "Ever since you came back, you've done nothing but treat me like a stranger!"

"It's been three years! Things –" Wirt looked away and rubbed the back of his head. "Things are different than they used to be."

For a minute, Beatrice just blinked at him, and then a very sad look crossed her face. "Trust me," she said, voice thick. "I noticed."

Greg sat down slowly. Sara looked like she wanted to cry and Dipper and Mabel were shooting little signs and gestures at one another to talk without saying anything aloud; Beatrice was turning away from Wirt now, and Wirt looked like he wanted to say something to her, but wouldn't let himself. Every mean word flying over Greg's head felt like a little punch. He was so tired. He wanted to tell everyone to just _stop,_ that they were all being terrible to each other and why couldn't they remember that they'd agreed just that morning to all be friends? But he couldn't say that, because then everyone would know he was upset, and that couldn't happen. He was Greg the Cheerful. He _had_ to be.

Then Jason Funderburker whispered, _"Rorrp,"_ and a little lightbulb went up over Greg's head.

 _"Ohhh,"_ he began to sing, and everyone turned to look at him. He stumbled to his feet and threw his hands out, jazzy-like. _"The big bad wolf's a-comin' and he wants to eat our face/ But he doesn't know that our team's very greatest in this case!"_ He began marching in place and then up toward Beatrice, circling her feet where she stood. He took a handful of her hem and brought it with him until it was wound tight, then let it go. _"When everything seems saddest and you only wanna frown/ You can always count on Beatrice in her super pretty gown!"_ Dipper seemed startled by the musical interlude; Mabel looked delighted.

 _"There's Dipper and there's Mabel, and they always win the day/ They always work together to scare the monsters away! And Sara's smartest-ever and the bestest friend to boot/ When she gets angry, watch out, you should pack your stuff and scoot!"_ He'd never seen Sara angry, actually; it just rhymed. He danced up to Wirt and wrapped himself up in the cloak. _"And this is Wirt and he's the greatest brother ever was/ He'll make sure everybody's okay in the end becaaaause…"_ He took a deep breath. _"We're together now and friends is what we're gonna be / And if that wolf thinks that we're nooot… We'll turn_ him _into a tree!"_

He ended the song on a high note and let his arms drop with a _whoof._ Mabel clapped her hands to her mouth. "Ohh my gosh," she said. "You're adorable _and_ musical!"

"Thank you!" Greg said proudly, and tipped his saucepan. Everyone was looking at him; that was a good thing. It meant they weren't thinking about how mad they were at each other anymore.

"What did he say about the tree at the end, there?" Dipper asked out of the side of his mouth.

Beatrice had a funny look on her face as she looked down at him. "Greg…" she said.

"Wirt and I really missed you for a long time, Beatrice," Greg said, extricating himself from the cloak. "You're a really good friend." He hugged her thighs and she seemed to tense. He could tell she and Wirt were looking at one another again, but he couldn't see their faces, so he just closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Her dress smelled like moss.

"Seriously," Dipper said again. "What was that about the tree?"

His sister shushed him. "Can't you see we're having a moment?"

"Yeah, yeah, I get that, but –" Greg looked up again. The big kid was stomping around in little circles and rubbing his forehead. "What are the chances of this?" he asked himself, throwing his hands out. "All of you know about the supernatural? The paranormal? She's right, you know," he gestured at Sara, "seeing talking wolves and being cool with it is _super_ weird."

"You were," Wirt said.

"Yeah, but we're _supposed_ to be super weird!" he exclaimed. "I didn't know you were, too!" His eyes narrowed and he slipped inside the tight knot of their group, examining each of them closely. "How much do you know?" he asked. He poked Beatrice's arm suspiciously and she slapped his hand. "What have you seen?"

"This guy's a loon," she said, jabbing her thumb at Dipper.

"Don't I know it," Mabel said, greatly resigned.

"I'm on his side," Sara spoke up. She hadn't said anything in a while, and even now, her voice was kind of quiet. _"I_ sure want to hear the whole story."

"I thought you already _knew_ about the animal school and the cursed bluebird," Beatrice said loftily, and Sara didn't say anything back, but her expression turned hurt, and for once, Beatrice seemed to notice. She stopped, and looked away, almost shame-faced. "Sorry," she murmured under her breath.

Mabel stepped out and said, "You know what?" She took Dipper and Wirt by the shoulders, and pulled them both in close to her. "I think this is fate. Look at us! We're six radical youths, inducted into the _mysterious,_ bound by destiny and circumstance to wander this forsaken world together." She gestured to an imaginary vista before them. "Who knows what adventures await us on the horizon?!"

"None," Beatrice muttered, "if we get eaten by wolves tomorrow."

"'Radical?'" Sara asked.

Dipper shrugged his way out of his sister's grip and ruffled her hair. "Don't mind Mabel," he said as she stuck her tongue out at him. "She's still living in the 80's."

"Yeah?" Wirt looked from him to Greg and Sara and back again with a nervous half-smile. "Aren't we all?" Nobody said anything to that, but Greg sidled up to his brother's leg and wrapped an arm around it to tell him he was listening.

At last, nobody was arguing. Nobody was being mean to each other. He peeked into his sweater and whispered to Jason Funderburker, "Thanks for the idea, buddy," and the frog gave him a smile.

It wasn't always easy being Greg the Cheerful, but it was always worth it.

Dipper insisted that they not leave the shack again that night. Greg thought they were supposed to make as much progress every day as they could, but apparently things had changed now. "If we're anticipating an attack, this place is strategic," he instructed. "One entrance and exit, and the roof gives us high ground. We need to work to hold this structure, no matter what." Nobody argued with that. It was either because Dipper knew what he was talking about, or because no one else did. Sara took off her jacket and started to move the rubble out of the fireplace, and Beatrice jumped in to help without a word. Wirt made a few short, skittish trips outside to grab kindling, and by the time the sun had begun to set, they had a merrily crackling fire in the hearth. Greg handed out the candy dutifully, and this time even Sara and his brother took some. They were probably really hungry from that morning. Greg's tummy rumbled unhappily as he ate his Straw-very. He didn't say so, but he was starting to understand why the two of them had stopped enjoying the sweets.

The noises in the woods started up, as usual, just before sunset, when the sky was orange and the shadows blue. The ghostly wails faded in and out per minute as darkness set in, but inside that dusty old shack, Greg felt safer than he had in a long time. He crawled under Wirt's arm and cuddled in the warm spot there as slowly, finally, people started to talk.

"So," Dipper said, his travel blanket draped over his shoulders and the firelight flickering off of his face. "'The Unknown.'"

"Yup," Beatrice said, tight-lipped.

"Totally," Sara murmured.

Then nobody said anything else. Mabel looked back and forth between people and rocked a little bit where she sat. "Yeahh," she said, avoiding eye contact. "Guess we should probably talk about it, huh?"

Wirt shifted uncomfortably. "Yeah."

Silence again.

Greg pulled the cloak around his shoulders like a king's grand robe and pursed his lips, waiting for someone to speak. What was everyone being so gosh-darn weird about all the time lately? "It's where me and Wirt went once," he finally said, matter-of-factly.

Mabel perked up and scooted closer to him and his brother. "Yeah? You gonna be the one to tell the tale?" she asked, and held a fist out in the air close to his shoulder. He looked at it, and then her. "…Bump it. It's a fist-bump." Greg pulled out his hand and met her knuckles gently with his own. "There you go! Wirt, you've got to get your little bro down with the gesticulational lingo."

"Don't look at me. I have no idea what you're doing either."

 _"Anyway,"_ Dipper said a little more forcefully, and he too scooted closer on Wirt's other side, eyes intent on Greg. "What were you saying, buddy?"

 _Buddy._ Greg liked being his buddy. "Okay, _so,"_ he began, and sat up proudly as he flounced the cloak for enhanced grandness. "Back when I was little and Wirt was in high school the second time –"

"Oh, God," his brother said, and put a hand over his face. "Not the second _time,_ Greg. The second _year."_

"Yeah. So it was your second time being in high school." Obviously. "And it was Halloween, just like tonight –"

"Four nights ago," Sara interrupted. Greg frowned at her.

 _"Tonight,"_ he emphasized, and gave everyone a look to tell them that if they had any more to say, they should get it out of their systems now. "Okay. It was Halloween and Wirt and me almost got hit by a train, and we fell into the lake and when we realized what had happened we were walking in the woods –"

"Train?" Mabel asked. "Woods? Whaaat…?"

"Yeah!" Greg said, and raised his hands up high to indicate the sky. "It was woods just like these, but kinda different. It had towns, and roads, and Uncle Endicott, and that's when we met Beatrice, when she was a bird." He pointed at the girl in question, as if they might have forgotten she was there.

"Wait, you used to be a bird?" Mabel asked, interest piqued.

"Okay, no, leave me out of this," said Beatrice, holding up her hands defensively. "I don't wanna be in the story."

"You were _always_ in the story," Sara said wistfully, and Greg turned to look at her. She was sitting furthest from the fire, with her cheek in her hand and a kind of happy-sad look on her face. "I've never heard any part of it that you weren't." Beatrice stared at her. Greg wasn't sure what her expression meant, but he hoped another fight wasn't going to break out as he continued his narrative carefully.

"…Sooo, Wirt and me and Beatrice and Jason Funderburker walked for a long time – not Beatrice, though, she flew – and we were trying to find a way home, but the Beast tried to keep us in the Unknown and turn me and Wirt into trees." He shuffled his feet a little. "But Beatrice defeated the Beast and –"

"What?" The redhead narrowed her eyes at him. "Where'd you get that idea?"

"Wirt. _I_ don't remember it. I was the tree." She pulled a face at his brother and he shrugged helplessly. "But Beatrice defeated the Beast and then Wirt and Jason Funderburker and I got to go home and when we did we were in the hospital." He clapped his hands neatly in his lap and grinned. "And that's that."

Mabel looked at Wirt. "Care to translate?" she asked with an apologetic smile.

Wirt pulled his lips down to the side. "Three years ago, Greg and I fell into a lake and woke up here," he said. "Or a place that looked a lot like it. It's where we know Beatrice from."

"I said I don't wanna be in the story," Beatrice muttered again, but she sounded less huffy about it than before.

Dipper's eyebrows shot upward. "Wait, you're a _local?"_ he asked her incredulously.

She said, "I don't like your tone," instead of giving him an answer.

"Anyway," Wirt continued. "I mean, I – it's a really long story. There was a lot of weird stuff. But the long and short of it is that there was something in the woods that wanted to – to – t-to claim us. It called itself the Beast and it kept itself alive with Edelwood oil."

"Isn't that the word those wolves used?" Mabel asked, swaying side-to-side with her arms up inside her sweater. "It sounded like some dude or something."

"It's a tree made of people," Greg said helpfully.

"Spooky."

"But the Beast is dead," Wirt continued, pulling his shoulders way up next to his ears. "The woodsm– I mean, Beatrice killed it." Outside, there sounded a rumbling croon that shifted as it rolled. It seemed to pass very near to the thin walls, but there was nothing to see in the light that spilled out the door. "I thought he grew the trees, but the wolves, they said they – they were doing this for the Edelwood. And I don't know what that means."

"It means," Beatrice spoke up, "that the trees didn't come from the Beast. The Beast came from the trees." She sat separated from the rest of the group, curled on the bottomside of the upside-down table near the wall furthest from Greg, her back against the only unbroken leg. "Things have been different since y… since _I_ defeated him, Wirt." The two of them exchanged another quick glance. She was looking at him like they were the only two in the room. "The forest is different. I mean, that's the rumor, anyway. Like it's gotten meaner. It wasn't ever a place people wanted to go, but now they say it goes to people. Spreads into towns. Uproots fields overnight." She chewed on the inside of her lip. "Say anything about the Beast, but at least he kept his space to himself." Greg squirmed and put his arm around Wirt's back. His brother responded in turn, and it made him feel a little better.

Everyone was looking everywhere except at each other. Sara scratched the back of her head. The fire crackled and slumped, and Wirt absently rolled another broken branch into the flames.

"So," Dipper said finally. "You think you know what this place is."

Wirt looked down at him, and Greg nodded assuredly. "Yeah."

"And you think you've been here before."

"Think so."

"I just can't –" Dipper rubbed his temples furiously. "I can't make heads or tails of this. This has to be some other plane or dimension or something, right? Mabel, could we – we could be maybe in the Mindscape, or –?"

"Hey," Sara said, sitting forward a little. "We haven't gotten your side of the story yet." But Dipper just waved his hand impatiently.

"It's nothing," he said as he drummed his fingers on the ground. "Mabel and I got tied in with this dream demon's plan to take over the world a few summers back and –"

A chorus of voices in different colors of disbelief: "What?!"

"– and demonic possession, rising and falling action, bad guy's defeated, blah blah, done. That's over. _This,"_ he slammed his fist against his palm, "is now. And we've got to figure out just what the hell is going on in the now."

"You don't get to just skip over all that," Wirt complained.

"It's kiinda a long story," Mabel said, rubbing her arms through her sweater. She was more bashful about it than seemed normal for her. "Heh, I mean, it's nothing you guys can't imagine pretty well if you've done the dimension-hopping thing already, right?"

 _"I_ haven't," Sara confessed as Beatrice simultaneously crossed her arms and said, "Not me."

"Okay," Dipper mused, "okay, let's…" His face was all scrunched up and he stroked his little beard with two fingers. "We're the last six people left on earth, maybe. And all six of us have past ties to the supernatural. Th-the… the inconceivable. The magical. The _weird._ "

"Somethin' tells me _this_ one would have a connection to the weird even without all this Unknown biz," Mabel said, elbowing Wirt with a hearty grin. Beatrice snorted behind her hand and Wirt turned pink. "Heyohh! See? Amiright?"

"You are right," Greg said, and stood up on his tiptoes to muss his brother's hair. "That's why we love him!"

"Don't tease Wirt," Sara said affectionately.

Wirt patted his hair back down. "Yeah, don't tease me."

Dipper said, "Everyone, come on, focus here!" He snapped his fingers and the group turned to him again, hunched up underneath his blanket by the fire with a wild look. "D-don't you understand how significant this is? This was no _accident._ Not by a long shot. Before this, maybe it was – maybe it was just a coincidence and Mabel and I of all people were left, but now… What does it mean? What the hell does it mean? Think, Dipper, _think..."_ He was starting to rock back and forward a little, and Mabel's smile dropped away quickly as she moved back to put her hands on her brother's shoulders.

"'S alright, Dip," she said soothingly. He looked flushed. "It's all good. You're right about the weird, but we're gonna figure things out. Just give it time. It doesn't have to be now." He blinked a few times; his chest was heaving, and his breath through his nose was loud. But slowly, he stopped rocking and dropped his chin onto his knees with a little _whooo_ of air. All eyes were on him, but he wouldn't meet them.

"I'm fine," he said presently. "I'm fine." Mabel gave him a sympathetic smile and one last squeeze about the shoulders before sitting down again, very close by his side. The panicky look in his eyes reminded Greg of how Wirt used to get sometimes, back after the first time they went to the Unknown, when he was scared about something but didn't want to talk to him about it, only Sara. He thought for a minute, and then decided to do the only thing that helped his brother back then, either: He stood up and marched over to give Dipper a hug.

The older boy stiffened as the eight-year-old wrapped his arms around the crown of his head where he sat on the ground, but slowly a small smile cracked his face. "Mabel was right," Dipper said shakily as Greg stepped back again. "You are adorable."

"Thank you!" said Greg. Mom told him to always be gracious when people pay you compliments. He sat down on Dipper's other side this time, just in case he needed another hug, and found himself wedged in the corner between the edge of the fireplace and the south wall. It was a very warm little spot, and his eyes drooped as the older kids started talking again.

"How did you know," asked Wirt, "to go to this Gravity Falls place if you've never seen the Unknown before?"

"I… Oh, man." There was shuffling, and the sound of blankets moving. "Shit."

"Not in front of Greg."

"Sorry. But I didn't – I mean, if this really is some other plane of existence, Mabel, don't – won't Gravity Falls not even exist here?"

Sara said, "Wait, this Gravity Falls place is _real?"_

"It's where Dip and I used to spend our summers. Or summer. I had a few summers. He just had the one."

"But seriously, Mabel, Jesus Christ –"

"Not in front of Greg."

 _"Sorry._ But we've been assuming this whole time we're still in a world where Oregon _exists._ If we're not, then –"

"It does," Beatrice interrupted. "Because I heard the same thing. That's why we were headed west at all. The bir– It's something I heard going around, that we might find something important there."

Dipper's voice had a suspicious edge. "…And _where_ exactly did you hear this?"

She sounded unconcerned. "I said so before. A little bird told me."

"Very helpful."

"I'm standoffish. What do you want from me?"

"I want to know if you really used to be a bird."

"I will never forgive Greg for sharing that."

Greg yawned widely and murmured, "You will," as he slipped down onto the ground with Jason Funderburker still curled on his chest under the sweater. "I'm adorable."

She squinted. "Wirt, when did your brother get a smart mouth?"

"After he spent a bunch of time with you, I'll bet."

There was a small snort of laughter, but Greg couldn't tell who'd made it, because his eyes were drifting closed. Conversation carried on for the big kids, but his tummy grumbled and he squirmed a little on the ground. He kind of wished he hadn't eaten that Straw-very; what he wouldn't have given for an actual strawberry instead. He missed real food, noodles and carrots and peanut butter and pizza. If he could have gone home, he would have run right through the door into his parents' arms, and kissed them both, and then eaten anything at all that they fed him, up to and including eggplant. Jason Funderburker croaked, and for a second Greg thought it was his stomach growling. If he thought about good food before falling asleep, it might be in his dreams.

Then something tickled his palm, and he sniffed and pulled his hand away from the dirt floor. There was resistance and pressure on his pinky as he did so, and then the tiniest _snap._ He opened his eyes. Something was unfurling against the wall, trying to grow up around his fingers. It looked like a weed; as he watched, another little stem sprouted up from the ground and unfolded a frilly-edged leaf, stretching out like it wanted to touch him. The end dipped downward as something heavy and round grew on the vine. He reached out to touch it, but his nose told him what it was even before his fingers did: a perfect, fat red strawberry, with a twin growing a few leaves over.

He sat up, and he stared at it; then he picked it and took an exploratory bite. It was the most wonderful thing he'd ever tasted in his life. He ate the strawberry stem and all, and took the second in his hand. His mouth was watery with excitement.

Sara was in the middle of saying, "…the wolves come back, I think I can hit one or two maybe from the roof –" But Greg interrupted her to leap to his feet and cry, "Wirt! Wirt!"

"What?" his brother asked as the boy came jogging over excitedly.

"Wait, no – it's a secret. Shush." He sat down at his side and looked innocent until everyone's attention went back elsewhere. When that had happened, he tugged on Wirt's cloak again to pull his ear down. "Wirt, I have a secret."

Wirt whispered back, "What?"

"I grew a strawberry!" Proudly, he took his brother's palm and discreetly placed the berry in it. "Two strawberries! I ate one, but look." Wirt did look. "I thought about them and then they were there!"

Wirt stared at the fruit blankly, all red and gold from the fire. "Where did you find this?" he asked

"I grew it!" Greg said again.

"What? How –?" But then he seemed to think better of it. "Was it growing in here?" He craned his head to look around. "Is there enough for everyone?"

"There were only two. This one's for you."

A pained look crossed his face. "Everybody has to eat. Not just me."

"Yeah. But if everybody can't, I want you to anyway." Greg shuffled a little. "Don't tell them, but you're my favorite." And he slid down to the floor and stuffed himself comfortably into Wirt's armpit again.

Wirt blinked at him once and then sniffed. Greg tilted his head at him, but he was looking away. "Thanks, Greg," he whispered. In their little corner of the shack, he, too, ate the strawberry, and the brothers sat warm and close together while the night howled at them from the other side of the thin wooden wall.

–

Wirt was a nervous guy at the best of times. He'd gotten better about it since he was in high school, no longer quite so prone to doomsaying and melancholy, but as the evening grew deeper and Greg slowly stopped squirming at his side and fell asleep, he couldn't help but feel the tendrils of that same old fear of the unknown that had clung to him for years. The forest was vast and dark, and he was but a small and helpless earthbound thing, the last bastion left standing between encroaching peril and the only family he had left. Dipper started talking about what they should do to prepare for the wolves in the coming day, scratching diagrams and lots of little arrows into the soil, and Wirt did his best to follow along, but as far as he could tell he simply wasn't involved in the plan very much. He wasn't sure whether to be relieved, disappointed, or even insulted by it. Mabel and Sara gave a lot of feedback; Beatrice gave much less. She was sitting still on the overturned table with her legs pulled up against her chest. Her thin ribbed nightgown splayed on the ground, like a waterfall down the mountain of her. He was looking at her, but she wouldn't look at him. He probably deserved that.

Gradually, conversation petered off. Dipper's plans were punctuated more and more often with yawns, and when Mabel tipped over onto his shoulder with a snore, he too leaned backward and began to drift off. Sara was already curled up under her jacket, breathing evenly. The noises in the woods were in a lull, and Wirt tried to close his eyes where he sat against the wall, but they didn't seem to want to stay, settling instead half-lidded and heavy while he stared mindlessly at the dirt floor. His brain was in a roiling fog of half-formed memory and dreams, flavored by the aching anxiety that had settled heavy in his jawbone and stomach and shoulders. He breathed as quiet as he could and tried unsuccessfully to readjust himself without disturbing Greg, and in response heard Beatrice whisper, "I can't sleep either."

He opened his eyes fully and looked to her. She'd hardly moved since the last time, still sitting upright with her chin on her knees. She was all in shades of red, between her hair and her blush and the firelight's tint. It was a stark contrast to the blue that usually colored his mental image of her. He was going to ask why – what was wrong – what was on her mind?, but knew she'd just call him a blockhead for asking obvious questions. So he said something true instead: "I - I'm afraid of what might happen tomorrow."

She lifted her eyes into the light. "Me too," she said. She straightened her back and splayed her long legs across the table, displaying the ridiculous contrast between her Regency nightgown and Sara's sister's worn tennis shoes. He would have expected a quip from her, but her tone was very serious: "We're in a lot of danger, aren't we?"

"Yeah." Wirt was very aware of the rise and fall of Greg's breath, under his hand. "We are."

"You were right, what you said earlier." Beatrice rubbed her hands together. "Things are different now." He didn't know in which way she meant, but it probably didn't matter. "Things have changed a lot." She looked sad, in a way he was not accustomed to. Sometimes he still found it strange just to see her emote with anything other than her eyes. Once upon a time, her mouth had been too small and rigid even for a smile, and in comparison to that she now seemed almost an open book, and one in which he usually read only anger and regret. He never knew what to do with that; he was bad enough at handling his own negative emotions. "…Wirt?"

"Yeah?"

"Why did you tell Greg _I_ defeated the Beast, back then?"

"Oh." He shifted uncomfortably, and it made Greg stir and frown, so he stopped. "It was… _hunhh."_ A sigh. "He asked how we got away from the Beast. You know, after we went home. And I didn't – I didn't feel comfortable trying to tell a story I was the hero of. I'm not a hero."

"You were pretty heroic," she said. She wasn't looking at him, but her voice was surprisingly tender.

"Having the basic decency to take care of your kid brother isn't heroic," he muttered.

"Calling a monster's bluff to his face is."

"But look where it's got us." The darkness outside the door was ever-so-slightly moonlit. He wondered if it didn't almost look like something was standing outside, waiting for them; it must have just been his imagination, but a heavy creep ran up his sides. "You said the forest is bigger than ever. The Unknown isn't any better off now."

"I wouldn't say that." She lifted half of her mouth in a smile and quickly dropped it again. "People don't lose children in the woods anymore."

"Not to wolves, either?" She didn't seem to have an answer to that. For a few minutes they sat quiet, intent in their own separate patches of earth. "I wanted him to remember," Wirt said finally.

"What?"

"I – I told him it was you who went up against the Beast because I wanted him to remember you as – like I told him, not this little bird, but this tall girl with crazy red hair. Like I got to see." He couldn't help a smile flickering across his face. "That he was trapped in the tree, and I snipped your wings so you could help me pull him out, and then the Beast comes looming out of the dark trying to say it was too late to save him and then – then _Beatrice_ steps up, and she's so _angry_ she's glowing almost brighter than the lantern is. And she doesn't listen to a word he says, but says she knows his secret and if he doesn't let us go she'll put him out like a candle." The embers from the fire cast the shack in red light lined by shadows. "And when we pull him out of the tree, she puts the Beast out anyway, because nobody - _nobody_ \- threatens Greg while Beatrice is around." He was grinning stupidly as the scenario played itself out behind his eyes, but quickly closed his face back up when he realized it. Beatrice's eyes looked a little wet.

She just whispered, "Why?"

"…I – I didn't think we were ever – I wanted him to have a story about you that he'd never forget." Mentally, he was back in the hospital, three years ago, staring at the ceiling in that space after his classmates had left and before his mother and stepdad arrived, still partially numb to the truth that it was _over._ "I didn't think we were ever going to see you again."

"Why?" Beatrice asked again. Her face was shadowy. "You could have come back. For years, I thought – it would be morning or evening, and I could swear that I… saw you coming up the road." He stared at her, lips slightly parted. It wasn't that simple, he wanted to say, she must have known that, and yet –

Had she not noticed whose gravestone she had been leaning up against on Halloween night?

He just croaked, "Th-things have changed," and Beatrice bit her lip, but nodded.

The nameless shrieks from outside were returning again, hiccupping laughter from all directions, but Wirt curled his body in a crescent around his little brother and held him tight. He couldn't see Beatrice, but heard her shift as well, until she stopped, and there was nothing left in the shack but the dying hiss of the fire and the tremors from the woods. The bluebird and the pilgrim turned their backs to one another and tried to sleep, and neither of them could see when Sara's eye peeked open slowly to flicker between the both of them, and finally, reluctantly, closed again.

* * *

 **Another (very) late update on my part - if you follow me at whiggitymacabee. tumblr. com, you can berate me for missing any future deadlines in real time! (Also I sometimes respond to writing prompts in ways that provide SUPER-SECRET ADVANCE INFO to followers. You should get in on it!)**


	6. Nothing Ever Dies in Vain

6

When Sara opened her eyes in the morning, her heart was already pounding, and she felt like she hadn't slept a wink. As every day, she briefly wondered if there was still a chance she might find all of the last few days dissipated in a dream, and roll over instead to see that she was only on a camping trip with her family, just like every fall; she would sit up to see her big sister crouched and cursing over a nascent fire, while Dad whistled showtunes with his head in the cooler, such a fantastically normal prospect that it almost made her stomach ache.

Though she knew it was coming, it was still deflating to see the rotting wooden ceiling come into focus above. She curled tighter beneath her jacket and wiped her nose, and flecks of white paint smeared across her knuckles. As soon as they had the water to spare, she would be happy to take the dumb stuff off; it was probably starting to look less like a costume skull and more like a wet napkin had dried to her face. She used a pinky to dig the sleep out of her eyes and wondered if she should try to doze again, but her shoulders ached deeply and her lower back felt knotted; the pressure of the hard earth was starting to take its toll on her each night. And in any case, she was far too wired to fall back asleep now. She tried to swallow, but her mouth was so dry it stuck to itself. She sat up instead.

Mabel, of all people, was already awake, leaning against her sleeping brother on the wall and staring heavy-lidded at the floor. She gave Sara a wan smile and wiggled her fingers in greeting. "Heyy," she croaked. "G'morning."

"Morning," Sara returned, hunching up her shoulders to ward off the morning cold. "Another bright and beautiful day in the wilderness." In her head, the words were deeply sardonic, but their tone upon passing her lips sounded genuine, and Mabel latched onto it gladly.

"That's the spirit," she said, swinging a fist in the air and making Dipper frown and shrug down into his sleep. "It's just like camping with friends, except without food or water or any way to get home!"

"No need to be a defeatist about it," Sara answered dryly. "We still have a _little_ water."

It was later in the morning than she would have normally risen, and the sun angling in across the threshold was brilliant white. She'd have liked to take a short walk outside, maybe even a jog, just to excise her anxiety, but realized with a resigned plunge that she couldn't. None of them could leave the shack at all today. Dipper's plans last night had been uncertain at best, by his own admission, but on that point alone he was completely confident: The wolves might return at any time, and the interior of the building was the only place where the environment worked to their advantage. Dipper was the sort of guy who talked his thought process out loud, and so Sara heard nearly all of it in formation – and most especially the parts where he continually turned to her to ask for feedback on it. As the only one among them who knew how to use the pistol, his plan in many ways relied on her, but she still felt afraid of the possibility that any ideas which came out of her head might actually be used in a life-or-death scenario. Even a single bad one could get them killed.

"How good are you with that thing?" he'd asked her after Greg went careening across the room with a secret for his brother.

She was a little startled. Her hand drifted to the grip of her father's 9 mm. "I'm alright."

He looked disappointed. "Just alright?"

"…I'm decent." She had no idea how to talk herself up. "Dad takes me to the range every month. _Took_ me to the range. I, uh… He's a cop." Something in her throat hitched, and she swallowed it. "Was. Was a cop."

"How many rounds?"

"Five."

"Okay." Dipper's eyes were far away as he stared at the hearth. "You know, there's a really good chance we're going to end up relying on you to keep us all alive tomorrow." Sara's heart skipped. "Whatever else happens, we'll probably be following your lead."

The crowdsourced plan eventually positioned all of them based on the conviction that they could catch the wolves in a bottleneck at the door, and that was pretty much the entirety of it; "How do we know they're going to come in at all?" Sara had asked. "They could wait outside and starve us out. What are we going to do – use someone as bait?" Dipper's shrug had not been altogether comforting.

She'd fallen asleep that night with a silent prayer that they'd think of something better by morning, but everything was still exactly as uncertain as before, and uncertainty was not a sensation Sara was altogether comfortable with. She was normally possessed of a mild, yet innate sense about the right thing to do in any given scenario, but this was so far beyond her scope of experience as to be almost alien; instead of cooking up fantastically intuitive plans to keep them all alive, she had spent the night dreaming that she badly needed to speak to Wirt, yet no matter how loudly she screamed, he couldn't hear her. When distress woke her in the dark, she found that her own cries in the nightmare had in reality been coming from outside the shack. She wasn't sure whether she'd managed to fall fully asleep again after that.

And now, worryingly, tomorrow had arrived. Maybe they still had time to plan, or maybe their pursuers were already waiting outside the door; either way, there was no buffer left between their group and its fate. Absently, Sara hunched her shoulders to relieve their soreness, and Mabel asked, "You okay?" She nodded, and surprised even herself with the realization that it wasn't really a lie. Granted that much, even most, of the last few days had proven impossible to bear with a grin, but true despair was still such a difficult emotion to want to give into when it grew from the seed of something as fabled as Wirt and Greg's Unknown. It was hard for her to parse her feelings about it: fistfights and starvation and wolf attacks are a series of events which should reasonably put anyone down in the dumps, but no matter how badly this world seemed to want to frighten or even hurt them, it never for a moment stopped being _fascinating,_ and that had to be worth something.

"Good morning," Mabel said again, and Sara pulled herself out of the fog of her thoughts to see the other girl giving the same acknowledgment to Beatrice that she'd offered her a few minutes before.

The redhead rose jerkily from sleep with a fist against her eye. "Hey," she mumbled back. Sara did not dwell on the fact that Beatrice never gave response to her own morning salutations.

Mabel said, "Look at usss," in a happy, low voice, and clapped her hands together. "It's early-morning girl time!" With her blanket still on her back, she crawled over toward Sara and Beatrice, and settled in the space between them, leaving Dipper, Wirt, and Greg by the hearth. "Sleepy boys. Let 'em snooze. How're _we_ all doin' this fine day, ehh?" She elbowed Sara encouragingly and then leaned over to take Beatrice by the shoulder. Her grin was incorrigible.

"Fine," Sara said, while Beatrice bluntly stated, "Terrible."

"Y'know, _not_ the most positive response, but I appreciate your honesty." Mabel clapped Beatrice on the back. "Hey, why the long faces? We all worried about, what – wolves, now?" She looked back and forth between them. "Naah. Those suckers are gonna come in through that door and we've got Sara on our side here! She's a crack shot. Right?" Sara smiled weakly while Beatrice gave her an inscrutable look. "We'll be outta this dump by noon, I guarantee it. Dippingsauce's plan is foolproof."

It was far from foolproof, and relied entirely on the idea that the wolves would keep trying to enter the door over mounds of their fallen brethren. "That's right," Sara said, her tone a happy lie. "This is gonna be easy. Trust me, Beatrice."

"Sure," said the other girl. She looked away, and Sara was struck, not for the first time, with the peculiarity of feeling that someone she felt she'd known for three years was still really such a stranger. Because Sara had, of course, long known about the truth of 'that Halloween,' as they euphemistically referred to it; she and Wirt had been a couple through half of high school, after all, and over that time they must have spent tens of hours talking about an impossible experience which he never expected to be able to validate beyond the shared conviction of his little brother.

Sara had always tried to be everything they needed in a confidante; Wirt was her best friend, and she trusted him, so what was the point in being openly skeptical of something that mattered so much to him? She laughed when he told about the advice he'd been given on how to plan his wedding, and gasped at the realization of an Edelwood's heart, and said many times with a knowing smile, "I think I'd like her," when he recalled Beatrice's more antagonistic habits; never once did she express doubt or derision. Still, the conversations always, somehow, had an air of the academic about them – inevitably, they turned theoretical, the abstraction of an incident which it visibly hurt him to carry in secret. She certainly didn't disbelieve him, but neither did she fully comprehend it as the truth. It was Schrödinger's Tall Tale. And so she still felt like it was her own fault, in a way, that she'd not been better prepared when the forest came creeping out into the world like shadows and unfurled, blooming, into full form by the light of the half-moon. That she had been so shocked, so confused, when Beatrice – not a whimsically belligerent storybook bluebird turned friend and ally, but statuesque and wild-haired and _real,_ and desperately foul-mouthed – first sat up in the sylvan graveyard to demand that Wirt tell her where she was and how they'd found her and just who the hell was this _other_ person?

Suddenly, Sara was the one standing on the outside of a shared experience which she had never expected to have to fully confront. This Unknown was much deeper and darker than she'd ever imagined, while Beatrice was not the sly comrade she'd sometimes fantasized about, but intimidatingly beautiful and deeply supercilious. She and Greg and Wirt were three old friends strung together by magic and time and fate; Sara was The Ex-Girlfriend standing awkwardly at the edge of their group photograph. If she had found herself in a position of leadership between the four of them, it was only because she was singularly untouched by whatever history floated constantly in the air between Wirt and the girl he'd once known as a bird, preventing either of them from trying to assert direction over the other. She wanted badly to understand this world, but it seemed determined to elude her grasp; it was full of misty silence and stalking shadows and talking wolves, and she was the only one of them who seemed unprepared to face them. Meeting the twins had only served to reinforce her worry that, somehow, her presence here was a fluke. All of them but her had touched other realities in the past; she was glad, of course, not to have disappeared with everyone else, but when you really thought about it, she should have. Shouldn't she?

Wirt, Greg, even Beatrice all had the decency not to say so. But still, she wondered.

Mabel said, "Let's bond over _girl stuff_ before the boys wake up," and planted her hands firmly on the dirt floor. "Bras and dating and taking cute selfies – anyone?" Beatrice looked at Sara, and she shrugged. "Alriight, tough crowd. Let's go a little more general… Who likes puppies?"

Sara considered this. "I like puppies."

"Puppies are good," Beatrice agreed.

"Fantastic!" Mabel took both of them by the arms and pulled them close. "Then this is the thesis of our friendship. The tie that unites us across time and space… _puppies."_

"Is there a button or something that I can use to turn you to a lower setting?" Beatrice asked, and Sara laughed.

Mabel didn't seem to mind, though. She said very earnestly, "My Grunkle Stan tried that once! The summer when I was thirteen and staying at the Shack there was this one week I was just totally like, _woah,_ even more than normal, right? And not me or anybody knew what was going on, and Stan got so weirded out he actually went to a witch and paid out the nose for some mystical potion or somethin' to calm me down and it _worked_." She pulled her skirt tight over her knees and rocked backward a little. "But then we found out I was just PMSing. The witch charged him like a hundred and fifty bucks for Midol." Sara caught her snort in her jacket sleeve. "Boy, was _he_ pissed."

Beatrice looked unfazed by the story. "Couldn't have expected much more from a witch," she said, crossing her arms. Sara shook her head at that, and the tall girl gave her a sharp look: "What?"

Sara started, and then muttered, "Sorry. It's, uh… I'm not so used to people talking about witches like they're real."

"You've _never_ met a witch?" Beatrice asked, raising her eyebrow disbelievingly. But then her expression furrowed, and she muttered, "Actually, I guess that's one more thing I should be jealous of you for."

"Witches aren't all bad," Mabel said kindly. "I remodeled one's home once. And don't skepticalize on Sara," she insisted, offering her a hug. "The far-off realm from whence we hail isn't super well-known for its high witch density."

"Sounds like _yours_ is," Sara said.

"Only Gravity Falls. It's not normal."

"I suppose not. I mean…" In a spur of light-heartedness, she decided to take the opening. _"You_ came from there, didn't you?"

Mabel threw her head back in a loud laugh and Dipper moaned, _"Shuddupp,"_ back where she'd left him by the wall. "This one can dish it out!" she said, and elbowed Sara in the ribs. It hurt much more than it should have, but she grinned and took it. "Aw, man –" Once again, she took both Sara and Beatrice around the shoulders, and pulled them in close to her. "This whole mess is gonna be _so much better_ with my ladies around! And not least _becaaause…"_ She let the buildup hang in the air for a tantalizing moment. "…You guys can keep lookout while I go pee."

Beatrice, who'd had a faint smile on her face, dropped her brows immediately. "What," she asked flatly.

"Look, I really gotta go, okay?" She stood up and danced in place a little.

"Dipper said we shouldn't leave the shack today," Sara said. She liked Mabel, but felt like the escorting-one-another-to-the-bathroom stage of friendship was still a little further down the road.

"What Dipper doesn't know won't hurt 'im," Mabel said. "And it's not like I'm gonna get eaten by wolves, because you two are gonna keep an eye out. Riiight?"

Beatrice said, "This seems like a really bad idea."

"Yeah, it does. Too bad my plan has literally no alternatives aside from both of you just letting me die!" Mabel said, and knowing that she had won the argument, she took them by the wrists and began to pull them out the door. Sara spared a quick glance backward; all the boys were still sound asleep on the ground. She bit her lip, but said nothing, and all three of them stumbled out together into the sunlight.

Sara hadn't realized just how much the darkness of the shack had been weighing on her until she was free of it. Tension left her shoulders instantaneously when the morning sun touched them; pleasant frisson ran up her back. The breeze was stiff, and despite clear skies, the air smelled like rain coming. She actually sighed a little as Mabel let them go in front of the shack's grimy window. "Okay," she said, and pointed. "I'm gonna be behind _that_ tree and direct my eyeballs south, alright? So if you could just keep an eye on the other three directions between the two of ya, that'd be fan-tastic." She skipped toward the tree excitedly. "Just be a sec!"

"Her brother's gonna be angry about this," Sara said as she watched her bounce away.

"Who cares?" Beatrice asked, blasé. "A girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do. We can't all piss out the window." Again, Sara bit down on her sleeve to suppress her mirth. Beatrice glowered. "You keep laughing at me."

But for once, Sara did not feel cowed by her disdain. If she got eaten by a wolf later, she'd be very upset with herself for spending the morning meekly. "Well, you keep saying funny things," she said, and tried to affect the same brand of aloofness that Beatrice always did. It earned her a raised eyebrow. "Wirt never told me you were funny."

"I'm _not_ funny." Something about her tone sent Sara into fits again. "What?!"

"Y-you're just so _angry_ all the time," Sara chuckled, and wiped her brow with the back of her arm. It felt good to laugh again, though she did wonder how much of her mirth was thinly-veiled unease. "Isn't that exhausting for you?" Beatrice bristled, and Sara decided she could turn down the heat a little. "Sorry. …Hey."

"What?"

"Why did you say you were jealous of me?"

"What? I didn't say that."

"You did. Just back inside."

"I didn't say that."

"Because there's nothing to be jealous of me for. I'm not special. Trust me."

"I didn't say it."

"Okay."

They stood awkwardly side-by-side for a second, and then Sara said, "We're supposed to be keeping watch, aren't we?"

"Oh. Yeah." The turned their backs on one another to cover their guard. After a bated minute, Beatrice returned, "Why did _you_ say I was… 'Always in the story?'"

Sara frowned at the sunlit trees that comprised her vista. "When did I say that?"

"Last night." To bring up something from that long ago seemed uncharacteristic of her. "You said I was…" She audibly swallowed. "You said you'd never heard any part of it I wasn't in."

"Yeah?"

"I just wanted to know what you meant by that."

"It –" She rubbed her neck. "Wirt told me a lot about you."

"Oh. Fantastic."

"It was good stuff. Mostly. Well… it was _endearing."_

"Seriously?"

"Yeah."

"…He talked about you, too."

"What? Really?" Sara looked over her shoulder toward Beatrice. The taller girl's back was to her, arms crossed tightly. "That was back before we really even knew each other, really."

"Yeah, I got that impression," Beatrice said. "I didn't think you'd ever… But look where we are now." She had a very strange tone. "You seem really happy together."

It was an offhand comment, but felt positively piercing. Sara squirmed a little in her jacket and was going to say, _We used to be,_ but her thoughts were cut off by a rough, crackling squawk from the tree canopy, and she turned a curious eye upward. In the branches of a gnarled hickory tree sat a large white crow, looking for all the world like a mystical spirit guide from a children's book. It spread its wings and cawed again, the feathers on its throat rippling with each cry.

Sara hardly registered that Beatrice stiffened and spun on her heel to lock eyes on the animal; she just watched with mild interest as it called out a third time and then took wing, sailing over their heads with a final quork. She started to say, "What a pretty bird –" But Beatrice cut her off by clutching desperately at her arm. Sara was struck by it; the other girl hadn't ever really touched her before, not that she could remember. The skin beneath her freckles was as white as the crow.

Between gritted teeth, she whispered, _"They're coming."_

It took Sara an instant to understand what she was saying, but when she did, the plunge in her stomach was so abrupt that it bordered on painful. "What?" she whispered. Any sense of joviality she'd felt was gone; in an instant, the entire forest seemed to be made of eyes. "How do you know?"

 _"That's_ what you're concerned about?" Beatrice asked incredulously as Mabel finally stepped out from behind the tree.

"Heyy, friends," she said with a languorous grin that was dropped instantly as the two other girls sprinted forward to grab her under the arms and haul her toward the shack.

Sara's head felt like it was full of bees and her feet didn't seem to belong to her. They stumbled in the door together with a crash. Wirt sat up abruptly at their commotion, his hair a bird's nest, and slammed the side of his head into a brick jutting from the fireplace. _"Ow!"_

"Wirt?" Greg cried sleepily, reaching immediately for his brother before his eyes were even fully open. "Are you okay?"

"How long do we have till they show up?" Sara asked, standing squared in the doorway as if prepared to absorb a tackle on the wrestling mat.

"I don't know," Beatrice responded as she snatched up her bat from where it leaned against the rotten wall. "He said we had minutes. Maybe five?"

"Who seh whaa?" Dipper asked, stumbling around cloaked in his blanket while Mabel tried to haul him to his feet. "Wasappnin'?"

"I think the wolves are on their way," Mabel said, perfectly somber for once while she packed their stuff away and tossed her brother his sack. "Right?" She looked at Sara for confirmation. Why would she do that? Beatrice was the one who nodded, as she should, and yet everyone was still watching Sara. She supposed she _had_ been acting as a sort of leader for the last few days, but didn't they understand that she was the least appropriate of them all to take charge? She didn't know what was going on, hadn't since the moment the lights went out on Halloween night. Sweat broke out on her forehead. Silently, implicitly, they were relying on her, and she was going to let them down, because she had no idea what to do.

 _That's not true,_ said a little voice in her mind. _You have part of a plan and everyone's attention._

That's not enough! she thought desperately.

 _Bullshit,_ said the voice, which sounded curiously like her dad's, and something in her head seemed to clunk suddenly into place. _Most leaders only ever have the second one._

She breathed in, and then out.

In the end, it really didn't matter why people were deferring to her. She could either rise to the challenge, or let them all die.

So what were the parameters of their situation? Four wolves, six group members, three weapons between them. Greg was slowest and smallest, their weakest point. He needed someone on him at all times – Wirt, of course. All the adults needed to be armed, if possible. Her mind ran through their options, and then jumped up to the overturned table against the wall.

"Beatrice, cover the door," she said, and the tall girl looked startled, but she obliged. Sara marched to the half-rotten table and took hold of its last attached leg. With a grunt, she started jigging it back and forth. "Wirt – _ungh –_ you've gotta stay with Greg, okay? Keep him in that corner. You're protecting both of you." Wirt, who had just finished scrambling to his feet with a hand on the side of his head, nodded solemnly, but he looked very pale and very lost. Sara gritted her teeth and, with a concerted effort, snapped the leg off at an angle. Just as she'd hoped, the splintered wood formed a decently sharp point along the split.

She tossed the meter-long piece of walnut to her ex-boyfriend. He almost fumbled the catch, but made it in the end, and held the leg in his hands like a sword. In a pile of debris lay a second table leg, spongier than the first, but still carrying impressive heft. "This one's for you," Sara said to Mabel, and the girl took it with a determined nod. "You and Beatrice, stand on opposite sides of the door," she instructed. "Dipper, you're next to Mabel. Keep yourselves on the wall. Stay out of sight. We're doing this like we planned last night: Catch them at the door. On my signal." She laid out all the pieces from Dipper's plan, but now without reservation to their positioning; misgivings were a luxury they, abruptly, could no longer afford. She squared herself in front of the fireplace, stared directly out the door. Wirt and Greg were in the northwestern corner at her left; Dipper, Mabel, and Beatrice had flattened themselves against either side of the doorway. The twins were talking to one another with their eyes and Greg clung tightly to his brother's pants, but Beatrice's gaze was on Sara.

"You need to find a place to hide," she said, and had Sara been less hyperfocused, she would have been touched by the concern in her voice.

"Nope," was all she said, and she drew the 9 mm from her belt for the first time since the night they all met: "Someone's gotta be the bait."

The silence both in and outside the shack was almost suffocating. Sara felt like every point on her skin burned, the air almost steamy despite its chill. They waited, breathless. Sunlight and birdsong filtered through the slatted roof. Sara licked her lips and adjusted her hands to reestablish a grip on the sweaty gun. There was no room left for self-doubt, but slowly her shoulders started to fall. Beatrice was certain they were coming. She said so. Had it been five minutes yet? What if she was wrong? How did she know, anyway? What if they'd all gotten into position only to wait and wait until they lost their nerve and the plan fell apart and _that_ was when the wolves came and –

But her fear was alleviated, and then amplified a hundredfold, as something outside the south wall snapped on the ground. A still blanket fell over the interior of the shack. A small growl sounded, followed by the snap of teeth and a browbeaten whine.

No more noise. No one breathed. Sara realized her hands were shaking, but she didn't let them drop. The moment telescoped on itself, sharpening and narrowing to its longest point.

Then the morning sunlight pouring into the building was cut by a muddled shadow, and into the view from the open doorway finally slunk a slope-backed wolf, nose to the ground. Upon raising its head its gaze snapped immediately into the cabin's interior, and to Sara's whitened face. For long moment they stared at one another across the fifteen feet which separated them, it yellow-eyed and blank, her painted and terrified; and then its face split into a long, rubbery grin. She wondered if it was the one which had proposed to turn her into a peace offering the day before.

 _"Rabbits!"_ it howled, and came barreling toward the doorway. Sara's breath hitched. Things seemed much slower than they should have been. She could almost feel Wirt trying to press Greg hard enough into the corner that he might pass straight through it to safety. She saw each impact of the wolf's footfalls, sending loam and pine needles in a spray behind; saw Beatrice raise her bat above her head with an unforgiving expression; heard a cracked voice from outside cry, _"Sister, do not go inside!"_

As the shadow from the doorway passed over the wolf's muzzle, Sara cried, _"Now!"_

The wolf couldn't have known what ever hit it. Beatrice came down on the base of its skull with even more determination than she'd shown with Dipper, and as the animal yelped in pain Mabel hit it from the other side with her table leg. It lost its stride altogether and started to pitch forward toward the ground. Dipper slashed at its throat with his camping knife, and missed on the downswing, but brought the blade back up again furiously. It cut into the side of the wolf's neck, and nearly caught Beatrice in the face as well. "Careful, you idiot!" she screeched, just barely ducking out of his arm's reach in time.

"Sorry!" he cried, and once again plunged the knife into the base of the animal's skull as it collapsed over its own tangled limbs. It howled in pain, scrabbling on the ground, inky black bile leaking from between its teeth, but Dipper put his weight atop it and pushed the knife in further with a sickening crunch. Sara instinctually closed her eyes and looked away before remembering they couldn't afford the luxury of squeamishness. Wirt made an aghast sound at her side. She looked back up; the wolf laid two feet from the doorway in a puddle of black oil, and outside, all hell was breaking loose.

All of the wolves outside the shack were howling, snarling, pitching insanely, but one above the rest shrieked _"SISTER! NO!"_ in a deep and horrible voice. A second wolf skidded into view outside the cabin door and wasted no time smiling or teasing them; it looked like an animal possessed, wide-eyed and slavering, sliding too far from the doorway and then slamming its body into the frame as it tried to scramble madly inside. _"My sister! No! I'll KILL YOU!"_ The impact sent a shower of debris down on Beatrice's head, and she cried out with a hand clutching her eye; Mabel leapt forward and swung her club into the second wolf's throat. It made a piping sound but didn't appear staggered. It leapt at Mabel, and she yelled in pain as a paw caught her and sent her stumbling into the wall, her face only just falling away from its snapping teeth; Dipper started to rush forward with a cry, but Sara shouted, "Don't! Mabel, get _down!"_ It was a strange feeling when both of them did so without hesitation. Mabel didn't think twice about making a dead drop onto the floor, and the wolf slammed its face into the wall. A second sprinkling of rotting roof hit them.

The feeling of lifting the gun was unreal. She'd never so much as shot at a target with a face painted on it before, let alone something with fur and breath and heartbeat; she'd drawn it when she thought Wirt might be killed two nights ago, of course, but, despite her father's warnings that pulling a gun is always a form of conflict escalation, hadn't _really_ expected that she'd be forced to use it on anyone. This time was very different. The wolf stepped back, slightly dazed, and refocused on Mabel at its feet.

Her shots were clear, and rang out in the small room like explosions. The wolf howled as the first round hit it in the rump, and the second in the belly. It slumped sideways and Mabel scrambled to remove herself from its landing site. The wolf looked at Sara. Its eyes were still evil yellow, but now full of pain. For a second, she felt choked. Then she pulled the trigger one more time.

The second wolf fell limp to the floor of the shack. Something outside roared, inhuman, even inanimal, and quite suddenly the north wall at her left buckled inches inward from a heavy blow. _"NO! SISTERS!_ _These rabbits have killed our sisters!"_ Sara hardly reacted. She was still staring at the wolf. Their gazes locked on one another. Its side heaved, twice, and then no more.

Someone grabbed her by the shoulder. It was Wirt. Hadn't she told him to stay in the corner? He pulled her into his chest, so the buttons of his shirt caught on her cheek, and moved her toward where Beatrice and Mabel and Dipper stood. They had to step over the dead wolves to get there. Someone was holding her hand, small enough that it could only be Greg. Another shudder wracked the north wall of the shack, and then a third in the corner where Wirt and Greg had been standing before. She knew it was happening, but couldn't really hear it. The shots had made her deaf. Weird no one else seemed so.

Beatrice, of all people, took her from Wirt's grasp and pulled her to the wall. Her nightdress was blue. Sara had noticed it before, but not really _noticed._ Dipper was talking. "…going to bust in the wall," he said, clutching his knife. Beatrice's dress was blue, and his knuckles were white. "They know they can't come in the door. They're gonna knock the whole thing down."

"We have to get outta here," Mabel whispered. She was cradling her table leg like a baby.

"Can we run for it?" Wirt asked.

"Can you carry your brother?"

"I –" He looked down at Greg, who started to say he was fast enough to run himself, but Wirt cut him off. "Yes. Yes, I can." He scooped him up and held him close. Sara saw the strained look on his face, but he didn't complain.

"Sara," someone said, and suddenly she was face-to-face with Dipper, and he was holding her shoulders. Their noses almost touched. "We have to get outside. We have to run. Can you cover us?"

"I –"

"Screw running, we can't outrun wolves," Beatrice emphasized, and another bout of debris sprinkled their heads. "We get out there and make a circle, all pointy bits facing outward."

Yes. That sounded right. Wirt had always been right; Beatrice was clever. Mabel teetered back and forth, trying to catch a glimpse out the door from a very narrow angle. "I don't think they're out front," she said. The north wall was starting to splinter as it was caught by another heavy blow. The snarls and howls were deafening. "If we're gonna run, we should do it –"

And all six of them leapt bodily from the south wall at their backs as it, too, suddenly bowed inward, its wooden slats splitting at the center, and the north wall opposite them burst inward fully, another long, toothy face shoving itself inside. It roared and shook its head, splattering mad black oil over the places where they'd been sleeping not twenty minutes before. The ceiling seemed to be at a different angle now than it had been when they woke. Sara didn't know when she'd started running with the rest, but there they were, all scrambling for the door. She wondered if the wolves were trying to chase them out. Screw it, they certainly were. It didn't matter. If they went outside, they had to fight wolves; if they stayed in, they got crushed. At least the first option _had_ a fight.

As the sunlight hit her face once again, her brain seemed to pull from its slog. She hadn't realized that she'd been holding her weapon low at the ready since the last time she'd fired it. Greg was pushed behind her, and Beatrice and Wirt were on either of her sides, brandishing their clubs, her grimacing, him looking panicked. The circle the five of them formed was tight and small, but effective. The north end of the shack finally collapsed behind them, and the south followed seconds after in a cloud of dust and a wolf's startled yelp.

For a moment, there was only silence; sudden chill swept across Sara's shoulders and she chanced a glance upward. A vast dark cloud had rolled in over the sun, and the trees were beginning to murmur in the lifting breeze. She could feel Greg behind her, clinging to her leg.

Then there was a growl, and one wolf limped around their side of the building, shaking rubble from its haunches, while the other, the black-nosed alpha, approached from the opposite. The animals eyed the group's self-made fortifications and bared their teeth. "Evil rabbits," whined the smaller with a harsh pant, flattening its ears against its neck. It looked to be bleeding slightly at the shoulder. Oily tears leaked from its eyes, and the two of them began to circle the group slowly, giving them wide berth. "Evil, evil snakes. The snakes have killed our sisters!"

"Our sisters were eager and stupid," said the alpha, sloping behind its brethren, leaving behind footprints the size of a small horse's. Its voice was calm, but its eyes were on fire. "They should have known, no animal knows traps better than a rabbit. Our sisters ran freely to their deaths."

"You can cut your losses now," a voice rang out, and in surprise, Sara found that it was hers. "Leave us _alone."_

The alpha passed within ten feet of her extended hands, green-eyed and terrible. "You know we cannot."

It was an innocuous line, but something about it absolutely infuriated her. "No! No, I don't know that! I don't know _anything!"_ she cried, and squared her stance. A single raindrop spattered on her hand.

"Sara," Wirt whispered at her elbow.

"Shut _up,_ Wirt!" she snapped. He stopped. She wasn't sure she'd ever spoken to _anyone_ so harshly before. It didn't feel good, but she couldn't stop talking. "I'm really happy you're so well-adjusted to all this magical _crap,_ but I've just about had it, I really have!" She heaved and drew herself up to her full height, which wasn't very impressive. "I should be dead right now, like everyone else in the whole God-forsaken world! Like my teachers and my friends and my _family!"_ Her vision blurred and resolved itself, and something warm and wet fell down her cheek. "But you know what? I'm _not_ dead! I'm _here,_ and I say, screw your wolf _rules_ and your wolf _promises_ and your wolf _games._ " The alpha had stopped. It was staring at her, drooling black. "I'm _still here,_ and as long as I am I might as well try to make sure n-nobody else _dies."_ Phantom recoil shuddered her bones, and the wolf in the shack stopped breathing again. She felt like a rope was tightening around her neck.

"The black rabbit knows nothing," sneered the smaller wolf. "It said so itself."

"Hey!" Mabel cried, indignant. _"Rude!"_

"The black rabbit believes the world does not grow from a gravebed," drawled the alpha. The wind was picking up, and the forest began to groan, as if in warning. Rain audibly pittered on the spare foliage. "The black rabbit believes the Edelwood is other than a gallows-tree. The black rabbit believes we have a choice. The black rabbit is _wrong_."

"We won't stop fighting you," Dipper spoke up from somewhere at Sara's back. His voice was higher-pitched than usual, but steady. "We took out two of you in as many minutes. We're going to win. Just let us _go_ and – she's right. No one else has to get hurt."

"These are not the rules."

"Screw your rules!" snapped Beatrice.

"Our _rules,"_ it snarled, and bared low against the ground, "are carved into the moon and stars! I wrote them there while the Edelwood wandered through worlds lost and frenzied, seeking a caretaker and finding _none_ suited for the task! Only by taking the burden upon ourselves has the wilderness not yet swallowed us all!" The wolf's eyes appeared to grow larger as it spoke, more bulbous; it struggled to blink. An enormous maple to the east groaned in the wind, sounding like almost a threat; the smaller wolf yelped and howled, and it continued to pace in circles around them, but was visibly quaking.

"My sisters have never known life without a master." As the alpha paced, its spittle dropped on the earth and small brown vines sprouted and reached to tangle around is paws, only to wither instantly. "This is the sacrifice we make. Rabbits could not know how deeply it is against a wolf's nature to serve. And every step of the way, rabbits, oh, it _fights_ us _._ Can you see?" Its head shook and twitched madly. "We are not its chosen familiars, but we do what we must until the day it shows it has found someone new. The Edelwood can be bound only by oath and void!"

Its great hunched back was swelling, blackening, seeming to squirm. Sara wasn't sure why, the more monstrous it became, the more she could only see it as a beaten animal. She knew she should take her shot, but couldn't bring herself to do it. The staggering wolf looked to be bursting out of its own skin. In an instant, the wind roared and hit the eight of them in the clearing like a blast, whistling menacingly over the erstwhile shack's still-standing chimney. Beatrice put a hand on Sara's shoulder, though which of them she was trying to steady was anyone's guess.

The mad wolf spread its legs and barked, with its muzzle in the air, "Yes! I say it again! Whether wanted or not, we have promised to starve and slaver and serve endlessly, and sow the bones of a thousand rabbits in order to preserve this world!" It didn't seem to be speaking to them anymore. The trees susurred and moaned angrily, and the wind blew ever harder, so that Sara had to remove one hand from her weapon to shield her eyes. The smaller wolf was crouching close to the ground and whimpering, panicked gaze flickering between treetops.

Behind her, Dipper was talking, but she couldn't really hear what he said. The wind was far too loud in her ears. _"…run,"_ she heard in snippet. _"The tree."_

She craned her head back toward the center of their circle. "What?" she asked loudly. "I can't hear you!"

"We're going for the tree," Wirt said. "Make a break for it!"

She cried, "Wait, I can't see! Which tree?" but suddenly, the group had already broken, and its warmth at her back was replaced with freezing wind. She spun, baffled, frightened, and Beatrice turned back with a determined look to grab her by the wrist and begin dragging her toward the edge of the clearing, where sat an ancient, spreading beech. Dipper was the first to reach it, and he hauled himself up into the lowest branch and reached downward with arms open to receive Greg from his brother. Sara's vision bounced and jostled as she ran, cut by sharp little raindrops. The tree seemed very far away. Mabel skidded up next to the trunk with her hair flying in the wind and turned back to her and Beatrice, wide-eyed. She screamed to them, "Look out!"

Sara didn't have to look, though, because she could hear the padding of feet pounding on the ground behind her. She tried to pull Beatrice to the side, but was blindsided then by a terrible roaring _"No!"_ and enormous force on her shoulder. Beatrice had been side-checked by the alpha wolf, and it bowled the both of them into the mossy dirt with a snarl. Sara hit her forehead on a raised root, and she cried out in pain. Her gun skipped away across the ground, but Beatrice's bat bounced within reach of her hand in turn, and she grabbed it and rolled over.

The big wolf had Beatrice on the ground, and her legs were bound by its feet on her skirt, tearing it at the seams. She cried out angrily and swung her fists at its muzzle, and in response the animal pressed its claws into her cheek and pushed her head sideways to expose her neck. Blood welled from underneath its paw. "No one ever dies in vain," it hissed, and opened its vast toothy mouth.

Sara brought the bat down on its head so hard that it seemed to jostle her very bones.

It screamed and staggered to the side as its smaller sibling skidded up next to it, shivering and whimpering and snarling in alternate. She hit it again while it reeled, turning its head away from Beatrice's face. _"Still,"_ the big one howled, voice muddled and low and black tears pouring from its eyes while Beatrice scrambled to her feet. "Still, rabbits cannot see! Rabbits and wolves alike, we are _nothing._ We all will grow with the Edelwood one day."

"B-but not today we won't," Sara said, and lifted the bat again in the harsh wind, looking for all the world like a tiny skull-faced grim. Beatrice, who had been standing at her back, ducked away for a moment and then held something over her shoulder – the pistol. Sara took it, handed her the bat back in turn, and Beatrice came up to stand next to her, skirt torn dramatically to the hip and blood dripping from her chin. Two women squared off against two wolves in the spare space between wind and trees and raindrops, and behind those same wolves now drew close three more figures: Dipper, Mabel, and Wirt, the latter's cloak spreading grand and black in the wild air behind him. Greg still sat high and safe in the branches of the beech tree. Dipper pointed, and they spread out in a semi-circle, brandishing their variously-makeshift weapons with determination. Sara and Beatrice separated in their turns, and the two wolves found themselves within a circle of five angry, armed teenagers. Both wolves were bristling, but panting. They looked almost exhausted. Sara had some sense that she should feel much the same, but her veins were full of fire. She had never felt so alive.

"Last chance," Mabel spoke up. Her rare somberness was actually almost frightening. "We said nobody else has to get hurt."

The alpha looked at her, and its green eyes narrowed. "Oh, rabbits," it sighed, and dropped its head. "We have been hurting for a very, very long time."

And in an instant, it turned and lunged at Wirt.

The scene seemed frozen for half a second. The wolf's feet left the ground, its mouth opened so that its wicked teeth seemed not just to be exposed, but to be extending longer and longer from black gums. Wirt stepped back, lowered his table leg, expression turning slowly to horror. In its sister's commotion, the smaller wolf turned tail and rushed toward Mabel, grinning madly. Sara realized what a fool she'd been not to take the shot before. She had two more rounds, two animals running in diverging directions, and no grace for a misfire. She could not stop both. Her mind whirred without purchase, but her hands were already taking aim at the big one.

 _I'm sorry, Mabel,_ she thought, and began to squeeze the trigger –

And the shot was rendered wholly redundant as a horrible, piercing creak and crack suddenly splintered the timeless moment, and an enormous, naked elm tore the earth asunder as it came crashing down atop the wolf that was only feet from Wirt's terrified face.

Dipper dove for cover. Black dirt sprayed up from the forest floor. The smaller wolf skidded immediately to a stop in front of Mabel and turned backward, ears perked, eyes wide. The elm came to rest perfectly within an unobstructed aisle between trees; its branches swayed and the earth shook with its impact. Sara was left frozen, recoil still buzzing her limbs. The tree blocked her view, and the woods had gone startlingly silent.

"Wirt," she croaked. She dropped the gun on the ground. "Wirt!" She sprinted around the side he'd been standing on, hardly cognizant of the fact that the smaller wolf was doing the same. It seemed not at all intent on her. She leapt over a mass of limbs, stumbled on impact, and continued forward blindly. Wirt was standing perhaps a yard away from the trunk, eyes frozen on the ground. The alpha was half obscured by the thick tree, its head resting on its forelegs as if sleeping. A small puddle of black oil seemed to be seeping out from underneath its belly.

Sara skidded to a halt, and Beatrice leapt over the trunk at the same time as the small wolf. "Wirt!" she cried, and bounded forward to envelop him in a hug while the wolf froze. It gave a small whine and pushed its nose against its sister's shoulder, but received no response. It snuffled and hunkered down beneath a limb as Greg, of all people, popped up next to his brother's arm and clutched it tightly. His knees looked dusty; he had to have jumped ten feet from the beech to descend it. The shock on his face was very un-Greglike. Dipper and Mabel came together around the mound of earth on the tree's roots and stared. "Holy shit," Dipper croaked. Sara felt much the same.

Mabel looked ashen, but pursed her lips and she, too, ran to Wirt's side. It wasn't until she touched Beatrice's shoulder that the taller girl pulled away from him. "A-are you okay?" she asked. He nodded dumbly.

"Holy shit," Dipper repeated, more certainly this time.

Wirt blinked and a vaguely concerned expression crossed his face. "Not in front of Greg," he murmured.

The little wolf seemed almost to shrink smaller as it groveled next to the trunk. It raised its muzzle and howled pathetically, and the bigger stirred slightly and wrinkled its nose. _"Sister,"_ it coughed weakly, and cracked open a dull green eye. Everyone grew still. "Be peaceful. We have done well, up till now." The small one rested its chin upon the larger's neck, and nipped at its ear, and then let out another small heartbroken sound. Sara chewed her lips. She felt empty inside.

"Don't cry, sister," rasped the alpha as its sibling tried to burrow its nose under its foreleg. "I suppose this is my final rebuttal. C-can you hear it?" It turned its head slightly and hacked a large blob of oil onto the forest floor. "I am freed in death, and you in life. The last three years were not in vain –" A harsh, gummy cough. "…O-our master has finally made a choice of its own."

The little wolf let out a moan that sounded like a spoken, _'Nooo,'_ and the alpha's single-eyed gaze flickered up to where Wirt, Mabel, Greg, and Beatrice stood close together, only feet away. "I give over to you at will," it gutturalized thickly. "But think hard on what rules you will write. Lifetime service is much longer than you would think." It slumped sideways with a sigh. Sara realized that she was shaking, and had been for a long time.

The smaller wolf jumped to its other side and wailed, _"Arrrro."_ Very weakly, the alpha raised its nose once more. "Be good, little fool," it whispered. "You are your own beast now." Gently, it licked its little sister's chin, and finally dropped its head to the ground and did not move again.

The last remaining wolf keened and pushed its shoulder and ear into the tree trunk, trying weakly to move it, but only lost footing and collapsed across the corpse of its sibling instead. Sara turned to glance across the faces of her friends. Not a single one of them seemed to feel triumphant for this. Wirt actually looked like he might cry.

Slowly, slowly, the wolf's cries petered out, and it pulled its face from ragged fur to raise its yellow gaze to them. Its face was still streaked with black, but the tears now leaking from its eyes were running clear. It looked from Sara to Dipper to Beatrice, and made a small sound.

"I'm sorry." Greg was the one who said it. His gaze was on the ground, and he looked almost tearful. "I'm really, really, really sorry." Wirt dropped to his knees and gave him a tight hug. For a moment, the wolf didn't move, until finally, stealthily, as though if it went slow enough they wouldn't notice, it slunk underneath a tree limb and crawled up atop the elm's trunk. It crouched there and spared a glance back at them, wind rushing its gray fur; then it leapt silently down the other side, and disappeared. Sparse rain spattered the trunk where it had stood only seconds before.

In the place where the wolf lay in a puddle of black oil, thin woody vines were beginning to snake up gracefully around its paws and muzzle, brown-stemmed and red of leaf.

* * *

 **This is not my greatest work; this chapter fought me tooth-and-nail every step of the way and it's taken me two days longer than I wanted to get it up. I can only hope Sara forgives me, and understands I promise to make her next chapter better. :(**

 **No update this coming weekend; I'll be travelling. But you can always follow posts about my family's no-frills, hyper-frugal vacationing style at whiggitymacabee. tumblr. com!**

 _ **(It may only be fanfic, but hours and hours of work per week go into each chapter of this story in order to provide the highest quality reading experience I am capable of. Your comments are the only payment I'll ever receive for it. If you've enjoyed it up to this point, your feedback and ability to recommend the fic to others are invaluable to me; even taking a minute to leave a smiley face in the comments is enough. Any amount connection to my readers makes the time and effort worth it. I love to hear from you guys!)**_


	7. Forcing a Smile

**Ahh, remember all the self-flagellation I used to launch into for being a week late on an update? I was so cute back then. I won't bore you with the hows and whys, but suffice it to say that this delay is almost entirely self-inflicted and I just promise not to do it again.**

7

You knew things were bleak when even Mabel had trouble forcing a smile.

The rain was picking up tempo, a rich liquid soundscape in the echoing woods, but no member of the group made any attempt to find cover. Dipper looked around shakily from one face to another, all equally wet and scared; his sister was slowly feeding a lock of hair into her mouth, Sara clenched and unclenched her hands over and over as if to reassure herself that they were still attached, and Wirt was huddled on the mulchy ground with his eyes locked on the dead wolf and his arms wrapped so tightly around his little brother that it was surprising the kid could still breathe. Dipper carried a sick feeling in his throat that he fought desperately to banish. Everyone was fine. Nobody had died. They had gotten through it together; this was supposed to be a happy moment. _If they'd eaten the others, you and your sister could have taken the food and scarpered,_ intoned a lazy, nasty voice at the back of his head, and he swallowed the unwanted thought with his nausea.

The drizzling silence was finally broken when a small hiss sounded, and most everybody but Wirt looked up. Beatrice stood with her head bowed, and when she raised it again, her hand was pressed tightly against the left side of her jaw. Rusty brown blood was smeared across her neck and knuckles. Dipper's stomach dropped.

"Oh, shi –" He bit his tongue with a half-glance at Wirt and Greg, though neither of them were paying much attention to him. "Shi… shirt. Um, shirt! Beatrice, here –" He shrugged out of his overshirt, a ratty flannel thing splattered with black wolf-oil, and pulled off his green shamrock tee without a second thought. He bit into the hem and began to tear out a large strip of fabric.

Beatrice seemed startled by this action, and looked away from him with uncharacteristic shyness. "Oh, put your shirt back on, I'm fine," she muttered as she sat down on a wet mossy boulder, but Dipper would not be so easily dissuaded now that his clothing was already ruined. He put the flannel shirt back on over his bare back and approached her.

"Here," he said again, and she tried to shrug him off, but he insisted. "No, seriously, you're bleeding. You're bleeding a lot. Take this." She hesitated once more, but finally took it and pressed the scrap of green cotton against her jaw, where it bloomed immediately blackish. Her dress had torn inappropriately high up the seam during her scuffle with the wolf, and she had a large laceration across the top of her right thigh as well, a more dangerous injury by far. "Mabel," he called as the rain spattered down and he worked to make an even bigger bandage of his once-shirt, "we don't have any antiseptic, do we?"

"Sorry, Dip," she said, and slowly perched on the edge of the boulder close by Beatrice's shoulder. When the taller girl turned her neck, she winced, and Mabel put a bracing hand on her arm.

"Great," Dipper muttered. "This'll have to do, then." He made sure he had enough shirt left over to change the bandages later, and knelt down before pausing briefly. "Can I…?" Beatrice gave him a steely nod, not making eye contact. Her freckles were dark enough to be visible even through the smears of blood. He brushed her skirt out of the way, wrapped the bandage around her thigh, and reached to his side where sat a broken wet tree branch the size of a billy club. He slipped it inside the bandage, took a deep breath, and twisted hard.

 _"Oww!"_ she cried roughly, and tried to jerk away. "Motherf– That _hurts!"_

"Sorry." He sat back on his heels with an ill feeling that he tried not to let show. The tourniquet was going to be soaked through in just a few minutes. "You've lost enough blood. If it had nicked an artery, you'd already be dead." She glanced uncertainly at him, sour expression wavering.

"Listen to him, Beatrice." Wirt's voice drifted over dully from his spot still just a few feet from the dead wolf. His eyes hadn't left its visage. "He knows what he's doing." It was a strangely affirming statement, for how lifeless it sounded, and against all expectations, Beatrice listened. She folded up the rag in her hand to reapply it to her face and ceased protest.

With a grunt, Dipper stood back up and shook the lingering crouch out of his legs. Mabel was still sitting next to Beatrice, asking if she was doing okay, and Greg was starting to wriggle in his brother's grip. "Did anyone else get hurt?" Dipper asked shakily. No one said anything, but Mabel shook her head. "Good, because our bandages are limited to the, uh, square footage of a medium men's t-shirt." As with most of the jokes he ever told, no one laughed. Sara stood conspicuously apart from the rest of them, with her head turned and her arms crossed. She wasn't looking at anything or anyone, but seemed absorbed in worrying thought. "Hey," Dipper said as he approached, and she jumped slightly.

"…Hey," she returned, taking a small, ashamed step back, like she didn't want him too close.

"Are, uh –" His gaze skipped up and down from her face to her feet to her hands, all positioned defensively. "Are you alright?"

"Yeah. I didn't get hurt," she said. "Hit my head, though, so I guess I'm in the club now."

"I didn't –" That wasn't the question he'd been asking, exactly, but he decided not to push it. He rubbed the back of his neck. "I just wanted to say, um – you were really – you were good, with the wolves. You were great." Her eyes were a little watery, but he pushed on: "You were just – calm and cool and… I think I might owe my life to you right now, and if I don't, Mabel definitely does. She – she could have been killed. She's the only sister I've got, you know? And if she ever got hurt I don't know if I could –" He stopped and swallowed, because he wasn't sure what the most direct route to his point was anymore. "Just. Thank you. Really. I'm, uh… I'm glad you guys started stalking us, that night."

Once again, it was supposed to be a joke. Her face seemed to crumple a little, and she smiled, but only perfunctorily. "Me too," she said, but the words rang hollow. Once again, she clenched her hands tightly, and he noticed that she was no longer holding the pistol. He wasn't sure where it had gone. "You did pretty good yourself, you know," she said. She wasn't making eye contact. "With that camping knife. You looked like you… really knew what you were doing."

Dipper thought back on tackling the first wolf inside the door, of shoving the knife down into the base of its skull as oil seeped between his fingers, until metal cleaved bone and movement ceased. It was like he was twelve again, and terrified, finger on the crossbow's trigger as a gold-eyed jaculus bared down on him and Wendy from out of the bloody, red-split sky.

His mouth felt poisonously arid. "Sure," he croaked. "So did you." It was transparently untrue; Dipper was terribly conscious of the tension held in her shoulders, the weakness in her jaw. Hers was not the body language of a woman at peace with killing, and he didn't know what to say to ease that pain. Should he offer her a hug? Was that too much? _Bumblebee's cute when she's upset,_ said the mean little liar in Dipper's head, and he ignored it as stolidly as ever. He didn't know where that nickname had come from. For a minute she just chewed her lip, and then she asked him, voice quiet, "Does it get easier to do?"

The rain washed her cheeks, and the black-and-white skull makeup was running in gray stripes down her throat. He considered lying, just for a moment, but she deserved better than that. "Yeah," he muttered, and it was his turn to avoid eye contact. "It does."

They stood still, several yards removed from everyone else. After a minute, Sara sniffed bravely and wiped underneath her eye with her wrist, and she seemed surprised when it came away covered in paint. "Here," Dipper said, and he wriggled out of one of his shirtsleeves and presented the damp cloth to her. She accepted it with a grateful look and took a moment to scrub at her face. When she pulled it away, some powdery white still lingered at her hairline and around her jaw, but for the first time, he could see her face clearly, dark and doe-eyed and snub-nosed.

She squinted at him. "Did I miss any?"

"A little here…" He gestured with his hand. She went in again and then gave him back his sleeve with an apology that it was now covered in paint. "Don't worry about it," he said. "If it dries hard enough I can probably use it as a gauntlet when that last wolf comes back." That one did get a chuckle. If he couldn't kill the fear in his own gut, he could least coax a laugh out of someone else. He gave her a half-smile and held out a hand to shake: "Hey, nice to meet you, by the way. I've never seen you around here before. I'm Dipper."

Sara smiled wryly. "You're going to have to tell me the story behind that name someday," she said, and accepted his gesture. He was half-ready to lift his bangs from his forehead and share the story there and then, but in the instant that her hand wrapped around his, painful high-voltage shock ran from Dipper's palm to behind his left eye, flashing white. He cried out and staggered backward like he'd been struck as the voice in his head barked, so loudly that it might have come from next to his ear:

 _TAKE WHAT YOU WANT._

He dropped heavily to his knees, one hand on his ear and the other on his eye, and gritted his teeth at the wet, mossy ground between his thighs while his vision sparked and popped. "Dipper?" Sara said, startled, but her voice seemed to be coming from very far away. "Are you okay?!" He gave no response. _What the hell,_ he thought blearily as a small commotion took up from where the rest of the group was standing. "Dipper?" he heard again, Mabel's voice this time. Squelchy footsteps jogged up to his side and he felt her wet hair brush his ear. She took up a handful of his collar. "Dipper, what's wrong?"

"Is he okay?" Sara repeated.

"Dipper?!"

"I'm _fine,"_ he grunted, and removed his hand from his eye, blinking experimentally. He felt like he'd been stabbed in the socket with a knitting needle, but the pain was fading fast; it was the phantom words in his ears that wouldn't fully fade. They had been loud and sudden enough to send his heart thundering, and his hands still shook as he stood back up, leaning on Mabel more than he would have liked. Everyone was looking at him, even Wirt having finally torn his gaze from the dead animal beneath the tree. Dipper avoided their eyes.

"I'm fine," he muttered again. "I got a thing. A pine needle. In my eye."

Sara looked to Mabel, seeking insight, but Mabel was looking at Dipper. If any of the others had fallen for it, she certainly hadn't, but thankfully she said nothing. She let her gaze linger on his for a second longer with _we'll-talk-later_ askanceness, but finally looked away and let out an immediate, audible gasp of delight. "Sara!" she cried, and clapped her hands over her mouth. "Oh my gosh, you're so pretty!"

"Huh?"

"Look at this girl!" Mabel said, taking her around the shoulder and pointing her at the others. "She had a beautiful face under her skull all along!"

Beatrice looked strangely perturbed as Mabel marched Sara back toward the others, but Wirt smiled, small, but noticeable. "Sara _is_ pretty," Greg piped up, having finally extricated himself from his brother's arms effectively enough to stand. "Wirt always said that all the time while they were kissing." The grin on Wirt's face was wiped immediately away.

 _"Greg –"_

"Don't embarrass your brother, Greg," murmured Beatrice, and Dipper actually had to do a double take to confirm that it came from her, because it was the most surprisingly tender-sounding thing that had ever come out of her mouth.

At very least, nobody was paying attention to him anymore, and for that Dipper was grateful. His pulse was steadying, and if he tried hard enough, he could almost fool himself that the pine needle story was true. He meandered back into the thick of the group as if nothing had happened, while the rain picked up harder, only for a few seconds, before lessening again. Greg walked over to Beatrice to offer her a hug around the calf of her uninjured leg, and Wirt finally stood up, wiping mud from his pants and cape. Dipper watched somewhat awkwardly for a moment before asking, "You okay, man?"

Wirt glanced to him and away again. "Yeah," he said, rubbing his right arm slightly, like it hurt. "I'm fine." His moppish hair was limp with rain. His eyes fell on the wolf, wrapped in woody brown vines, and he swallowed visibly. Dipper stepped up next to him, wanting to say something heartening, but nothing came to mind.

Instead, he said, "That thing almost killed you, huh?" and regretted it immediately.

Wirt grimaced. "Yeah, thanks. I remember. I was there."

"Tree had your back, though." Dipper laid a hand on the rough elm trunk, reflecting again on what an impressively stupid thing that was to say. He didn't know if it was his own social dysfunction or the lingering memory of their very knifey introduction that made Wirt such a hard person to talk to, but the end result was the same. "Maybe you, uh, could ask it to carve itself into a lean-to, while you're at it. To, you know. To keep us out of the rain."

"The implication of a world which bends itself to our whims," Wirt said, hollow-voiced, "is either the most comforting or most terrifying thing imaginable." Dipper wondered what must feel like to be so unselfconsciously melodramatic. Nice, probably. The taller boy looked at him, and added, "Your shirt's open."

"Huh?" It was. "Oh." He'd spent the whole conversation with Sara with his chest hairs hanging out. Great. He started fastening the buttons and, purely to make conversation, decided to ask, "So, you and Sara are…?" He meshed his fingers together and wiggled them vaguely. "I didn't know that."

"What? Oh, no." Wirt turned his head to look over at the girls and his brother, clustered closely together. Mabel held the hem of her sweater out over Greg's head to keep him dry. "I-I mean, we did. We used to, in high school. Not anymore." He had a very strange expression on his face.

"Oh. That's cool." But Dipper was chilled by the reverberation of the words in his mind again: _Take what you want._ He blinked rapidly, and his eyes fell on the wolf, being slowly subsumed by vegetation. "You, uh… do you have any idea what that thing was talking about, the promises and all? Was it talking to _you?"_

Wirt just croaked, "Not a clue," and his long face looked even more skeletal than Sara's had before the paint came off.

They stood there in the rain for a few seconds longer until Dipper sidled awkwardly away, and Wirt made no objection. "Hey," Dipper said to Beatrice again where she still sat on her wet rock. "How's it going?" She lifted the blood-soaked rag from her face and said nothing. The split flesh in the wound on her jaw was shiny and orange. "Jesus. Okay." He perched on the rock next to her, suddenly much more tired than he had been only a second ago. "I guess the good news is that it doesn't look like you're still bleeding anymore. Well… not there." Without thinking, he reached for her thigh, and she jumped away from his touch.

He assumed for a second that he'd hurt her: "What's wrong?!"

"You are _very_ forward," she said, twisting her lower body from him.

"…What? Are you being serious right now? I'm going to change your bandage."

"Just warn me before you go grabbing my legs next time."

"Forgive my brother," Mabel said, popping up over Beatrice's shoulder from out of nowhere with a cheeky grin. "He has very limited experience with how to handle a woman's thighs."

"Oh my God, Mabel!" Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Sara bow low with laughter, while Wirt looked sympathetically flustered. Dipper flushed red – and surprisingly, Beatrice did too. "Okay, that's enough," he said, and put a hand over his sister's stupid face and pushed her away from them. _"I'm_ the doctor here and _you_ are clearing out, right now." Mabel was too busy cackling to protest.

He muttered under his breath and started to untie the once-green bandage, already heavy with liquid. Thin silence fell between them as he tore out and tied up a fresh wrapping. "Thanks for doing this," Beatrice said finally. She screwed up her face when he redid the tourniquet, but didn't complain this time.

He sat back with a small breath. He had blood on his hands. "No problem," he said wearily.

"Sorry for trying to kill you with my bat." That got his attention. He turned his gaze up, but her eyes were stubbornly on the ground. "I guess I never really apologized for that, so – sorry."

He stayed quiet for a moment, then said, "I appreciate that." He rubbed the back of his head. "If it makes you feel any better, it doesn't hurt much anymore." She grunted. "Can you walk?"

"'Course I can walk." Beatrice stood up to prove it. She visibly bit her lip when she put weight on her bad leg, but bore it well. "See?"

"Great. I'm glad." He stood as well, coming in a spare inch shorter than she was. "You know, you're actually pretty tough. For, uh, a girl." She dug an elbow into his sternum and he stepped back with a chuckle.

"Yeah, next time I'll let you wrestle with the wolf. Alright, losers, and Greg," she announced, and crossed her arms over her sopping wet nightdress. Faces turned. "Let's get the hell out of here. I'm sick of that dead animal staring at me." There was no arguing that they needed to move, and for the first time in eighteen hours, their group as a whole looked forward in preparation to leave. Sara was the only one with eyes cast back. Dipper watched her skulk around the far side of the elm, toward the collapsed shack, apparently looking for something.

"What's up?" he asked, vaulting up on top of the trunk.

"Had to get this," Sara said, and picked up the pistol from the forest floor, twigs and mulch stuck to its wet grip and barrel. She turned on the safety and tucked it back into her belt. "I'm not feeling on great terms with this gun right now, but I guess we still kind of need it."

"How many rounds are left?"

"One."

"One wolf left, too."

"If it comes back." But she looked perturbed. "If there isn't anything else in these woods that we need to worry about more."

 _You have no idea, kid._ It was all Dipper could do to keep from slapping himself in the forehead to get his brain on straight. Sara gave him a wan smile and she, too, crawled atop the trunk and slid back down the other side, and in a few seconds they caught up with the rest of the group on the trackless northward road.

–

Going was slow, due in equal part to the bad weather and Beatrice's bad leg. Everyone had long ago given up hopes of staying dry, and acceptance of the rain made it easier to bear, somewhat. Mabel tried for a while to turn the experience of her cold damp sweater sticking to her collarbone into a positive _("It's a fantastic new tactile sensation! Today only, experience the thrills of – wet cotton!")_ but as Pacifica always said, you could only listen to the cheerleader in your own head for so long before you started wanting to strangle her. Beatrice said not a word of complaint all morning, but her struggle was clear and her bandage wept red, rusting the front of her ruined blue dress; at some point, Sara slipped in under the other girl's arm and took the burden of her weight upon herself without comment, and they walked that way until she grew tired and Wirt took over, and then Dipper. Sometimes, it seemed like the trees were spreading out as they walked, extending the distance between them and their destination a little further with each step. Rarely did anyone speak, and every once in a while, a heavy drop would fall from the evergreen branches above and _ploink_ tinnily off of the top of Greg's saucepan hat, setting off a startled croak from the frog in his shirt. These infrequent interludes, and the gradual changes of light and indistinct shadow, were the only measures of time in the endless gray woodland.

If it had been nine in the morning when they began walking, then it was scarcely three before they were forced to stop. Their frequent rests grew longer and longer, and developed eventually into an unremarked-upon close to their travels for the day, after Wirt pointed out a heavy cluster of trees that the rain had mostly not managed to penetrate. Sara helped Beatrice limp the last few yards to escape the weather and they eased down to the ground in tandem while the rest of the group trudged along behind, slopping drenched and miserable under the tree cover. Mabel knelt at Beatrice's side as she agonizingly extended her knee along the ground.

"Wet enough for ya?" she asked, as brightly as possible. Sara smiled for the attempt at levity, but Beatrice paid her no mind. Her face was very pale and she was trying not to look at her leg, which was understandable. It wasn't a pretty sight. While the boys sat down a few feet away at the base of a weeping fir, Sara pulled apart the torn hems of Beatrice's skirt with gentle fingers.

"Jesus," she muttered as she uncovered the crusting bandage. "I'm so sorry this happened."

Beatrice seemed to flush a little, but she didn't let herself look away. "I'd be a lot worse right now if not for you," she said. "Don't apologize." Mabel shifted her gaze between the other two women and then took both of them around the shoulders in a squeeze, as she had earlier that morning. Despite all the rain and all the blood, she decided that this hug was the better of the two. It was, after all, given with much more certainty that they were all going to live to see the sun go down that night.

"How are you doing?" Dipper asked, ducking over to where they sat and crouching by Beatrice's knee.

"Just peachy," she said through gritted teeth. Her hands hovered over the wrapping for a moment but she seemed to lose nerve, and pulled away again.

"Okay," Dipper said. "I'm gonna – I'm gonna change it, okay?" Beatrice nodded. "This might hurt. It might have… Well. It might hurt." He untied the tourniquet and pulled away the stiffened fabric with large scabs of blood. Beatrice blanched and curled her fists, but made not a sound until he was done, and even then only let a small exhaled _"Shit."_

"You know, you're pretty much a superwoman," Mabel said. "I'd have made Dipper start carrying me hours ago." Sara nodded vigorously. Beatrice gave a strained smile as Dipper tied on a new bandage, and this one didn't stain nearly as quickly. She hunched up her shoulders and shuddered, and Wirt joined them as she did.

"She's cold," he said quietly, "but we can't make a fire, can we?"

"Oh, don't talk about me like I'm not here, Wirt."

Dipper said, "Not a chance," and then did the exact opposite of what she'd asked by continuing, "but you're right, we've got to get her warmed up. Her core temperature could drop now that we're not moving anymore." Beatrice fumed, but Mabel was struck with an idea, and she stood up so suddenly that she thwacked her head against a low branch and splattered them all with water.

"Hold the phone!" she said, and slung her soaking backpack off of her shoulder. She wondered fervently if it was one of Dipper's waterproof bags, and miracle of miracles, it was. Both their blankets were still dry inside, and beneath them lay the item she'd been searching for: a worn pair of denim jeans with paint on the butt. "Tadaa!" she cried as she brandished them. "Dry clothing!"

"Trousers?" Beatrice asked, eyebrows almost at her hairline, at the same time as Sara's eyes widened and she, too began digging through the pack she carried. "For _me?"_ Behind her, Sara sat back up. In her hands she held a t-shirt, bright yellow with a cutoff collar and the words _BATTLE BEES_ emblazoned across the chest.

"I think it'll clash with your hair," she said, and laid the shirt across Beatrice's lap. "But getting you dry is the most important thing right now."

Beatrice blinked at the garment and picked it up with a wondrous expression. "Holy wow," she murmured as she ran the material between her fingers. "Look at that weave. And the _color."_ She looked at Sara in disbelief. "Where did you get this?"

"Uh, maybe The Gap?"

"Good Lord, that sounds terrifying." And Beatrice had never looked so enamored with a piece of clothing before.

The boys were shooed away across the copse, and in their absence, Mabel and Sara helped Beatrice to undress. They carefully peeled off the soaking blue nightgown, and both able-bodied girls worked in tandem to help her stand and put on the pants, a process which seemed to baffle and delight her. Mabel was thicker and shorter than Beatrice and the jeans hung low on her hips, but the extra-roomy fit let her bandage breathe. Sara, likewise, had a compact torso, and the hem of the t-shirt grazed the taller girl's bellybutton. "You've got to be kidding me," she mumbled as she looked down at herself, red-faced. "Does this even count as being dressed?"

"You know what, I like it," Mabel announced as Wirt and Dipper returned from their exile on the far side of a Douglas fir. "You've got this kind of sexy, no-effort slacker-grunge thing going on. You look like Wendy, actually. Hey Dipper!"

"What?"

"Doesn't Beatrice look like Wendy right now?"

His eyes skipped up and down her body and he flushed imperceptibly. "…No."

"You damn dirty liar."

He changed the subject with transparent determination to ignore his sister: "What the hell is a battle bee?"

Wirt stepped up next to him. "Our high school mascot."

"Aw," Mabel said, putting her hands on her cheeks. "A little angry bee! That's adorable."

"Yeah, well, you should have seen Sara in the bumblebee costume."

"Bumblebee costume?" Dipper had a curious tone to his voice. "What?"

"I was the school mascot for three years," Sara said, sitting back against her hands on the ground. "Beowulf the Bumblebee, that was me."

Dipper seemed perturbed. Mabel saw this, and made a snap decision to dilute it; "You know, I tried to make Dipper try out for school mascot once." He looked up, and she casually laid an arm across his shoulder. "I think he would have fit right into the costume."

"Oh? What was your mascot?"

"A great North American _nerd,"_ she said, and pounced on her brother to give him a noogie. The element of surprise balanced out their weight difference and they wrestled for a minute before she found herself clinging tightly to his back with the announcement, _"I won!"_ , just in time for him to fall backwards with her as his turtle shell.

"By the way, Wirt," Sara said while Mabel flailed, "this is a perfect example of why you never give your opponent a gravitational advantage during groundwork." Dipper finally relented, and Mabel stayed in a pile of damp pine needles for a moment longer, gasping for air. "You get smooshed."

"Thanks," Wirt said as he sat down next to Beatrice. "I'll remember that for next time I have a full-bodied wrestling match with someone." Sara shrugged with an 'as you like it' expression, and Mabel sat up as the rest of the group settled close by. She scanned their faces casually, but realized that they were one body short. Greg was not with the rest of them. When she turned around, she saw a small sliver of ugly orange sweater peeking out from behind a tree.

He was sitting back in the spot where the boys had been previously banished, with his back to a fir trunk and Jason Funderburker in his lap. "Hey there, buddy," Mabel said as she crouched down next to him around the tree's slight curve. He looked up. "You doin' alright?"

"Yeah, I'm okay." The poor kid had bags the size of Ziplocs under his eyes. He didn't sound like he was lying, exactly, but she'd never heard him so dull in the voice before. "I'm tired."

"Yeah, no kidding. Me too." She wiggled her toes in her shoes so that they squelched, and then glanced over at him. "You shouldn't hang out here by yourself, though. There's still a wolf out there." She nudged his shoulder gently.

"Nah." Greg pulled his mouth to the side and shrugged, and his saucepan hat rotated slightly and slipped down over the side of his face closer to her. "It isn't gonna bother us anymore."

"No?"

"No."

"How do you know that?"

"It's scared."

"Well, you know what, it should be!" Mabel lifted her arms and flexed her biceps invisibly under her wet sweater, grinning. "It's seen what happens when you mess with the Pines Twins and, uh… all you guys. What's your last name, anyway?"

Greg didn't answer, though. She couldn't see his face past the saucepan, but it seemed like he was looking at Jason Funderburker. The frog tilted his head sympathetically. "Hey, Maple?" he asked after a minute, and the thinness in his voice was frightening: "Do you ever want bad things to happen to people?"

"Huh?"

"When there are bad people, and they do bad things. Do you want bad things to happen to them, too?"

"Ah, jeez." She drew her knees up to her chest. "Yeah. I guess so. I think that happens to everyone." He sniffed a little, and she reached over to tip the pan up. He wasn't crying, but he looked a little red in the eye. "It's really normal, Greg," she said, and reached underneath to ruffle his hair. "And it doesn't make you a bad person. Having mean thoughts and doing mean things aren't the same. You know what I mean?"

"But what if the mean thoughts _make_ mean things happen?" he mumbled, wiping his nose on his sweater sleeve.

"What do you mean?"

"I dunno."

"Okay."

"I just –" He started to straighten, but sat back again with a frustrated expression. "When the wolf was going to hurt Wirt. This morning, you know? I was really, really scared, but – I was scared, but I was mad, too. I was mad that it hurt Beatrice and I was mad it wanted to hurt you and I was really, really mad because – I'd thought Wirt was finally gonna be safe in the tree with me but then he had to run back out to fight it –" He scrubbed at his eyes angrily and a little crack opened in Mabel's heart. She reached an arm around his shoulder and squeezed.

"It's alright, Greg."

"I wanted the wolf to get hurt," he sniffed, and Jason Funderburker nuzzled his chin, "and then it happened."

Mabel laid her cheek against the cold bottom of the pan and wrapped her other arm around Greg's front to complete the hug. The vista in front of them opened up into gray-green woods, and silvery raindrops dashed infrequently between the tree trunks. "It's alright," she murmured, while Greg hunched up his shoulders to become as small as possible. "You love Wirt, and you didn't want him to get hurt. That's what happens when you have a brother. You love them so much that…" She swallowed. She could still remember Dipper's silhouette, outlined against the whirring luminescence of a doorway made to connect worlds, and the golden glow in his eyes as he turned to look at her with a smile that intended to end them. "We'd do anything for 'em, wouldn't we?"

"But it _happened,_ Maple," he whimpered into her elbow, and she decided this was no time to correct him about her name. "I wanted the wolf to _die,_ and it did. The tree told me it would help and it did. And the strawberries –"

 _"Rorpp,"_ said Jason Funderburker.

"Jason Funderburker's right," Mabel said firmly. "Nothing that happened today was your fault, Greg, okay?" She put a finger under his chin and directed his eyes to hers. They were big and gray and tearful. "I mean that. You love your brother. You'd do anything to protect him and I think he'd do the same."

Greg buried his face in her wet sleeve and murmured, "He already did."

They sat there for a few minutes longer, cold and damp, watching the rain. Greg's breathing gradually slowed, and became quieter. "Let's get you back to your brother," Mabel said finally, and nudged the child so that he looked up again. "I think you'll feel better once you talk to him."

But Greg said, "No," and shook his head vigorously, stuffing his frog back into his sweater with a surprised ribbit. "I don't want him to know I was sad, Maple. Don't tell him. Please?"

"Alright, kiddo. If that's what you need." She stood up, and as she did, her phone tipped gently out of her skirt pocket and landed in a pile of moss. She picked it up with the initial thought that she and Dipper hadn't done a time check in almost two days now, but dismissed it; "No point saving this battery anymore," she muttered, and with a smile, handed the device to Greg. "You deserve a little destressing, you know? And I've got a ton of games for you to play. Come on, little guy –" She held a hand out to him. "Let's bring you back into the fold."

When they returned, it was to the conclusion of a story, courtesy of an unusually-charismatic Beatrice: "…and lo and behold, where do I find the cat? Pissed as hell and locked in the ice box. _Exactly_ like my brother said." They chuckled, and Wirt had an unusually carefree smile on as Greg and then Mabel sat down next to him.

"There you are," he said, and spun Greg's hat around so the handle stuck out the back. "Where have you been?"

"Peein'" Greg said nonchalantly.

"I had to check on him, to make sure he hadn't fallen in," Mabel said with a grin, and Greg nudged her, smiling shyly. "How's your leg, Bea? Can I call you that? 'Beatrice' is just kinda long, syllables-wise. What about 'Trixie'?"

Beatrice ignored her. "My leg feels – better, thanks." She was leaned up against a tree trunk with the leg in question extended carefully along the ground. Some color had returned to her face. She ran her fingers up the denim and frowned. "Trousers are weird. I've never worn men's clothing before." Dipper and Wirt exchanged looks, while Greg pulled on Mabel's sweater sleeve with a small inquiring sound.

"You can just call them pants," Sara said.

"I thought it was weird you were wearing them." Beatrice frowned at the other girl. "I thought it was just you. Is this normal where you come from?"

"Yeah, it's pretty normal."

"Maple?" Greg whispered from Mabel's side, and tugged on her shirt again.

"What's up?" she said without looking down.

"You said you had games, right?"

"Yeah. They're on the phone."

"What?"

"The games are on the phone, Greg."

"Like… phone tag?"

"Well, you know, that's not a game, but…" She picked up her cellphone from his lap and switched it on. Greg's eyes grew wide as saucers as the screen lit up blinding white in the dim shaded light. "There."

"Holy moly," he gasped, and held it reverently. "I thought this was a candy bar!"

Mabel laughed as the home screen booted up, and Wirt glanced over with mild interest. "Yeah, as if we haven't had enough candy lately." Greg wasn't laughing, though. The eight-year-old blinked at the background, depicting a princess punching a unicorn in the face, and poked the screen with a weak finger. He stiffened when it responded to his touch.

"Wirt," he said under his breath, and started elbowing his brother madly. "Wirt, look! Maple's got a Star Trek toy!"

"What?"

"It's a Star Trek thing!" He stood up with every sign of his previous melancholy gone, replaced by wholehearted thrill. "Can it scan the planet's surface for life?!"

"Seriously?" Dipper's attention had been caught, and he sat forward with an amused expression. "You've never let your little brother use a phone before?"

"Of course he uses the phone," Wirt said, agitated. "What are you talking about?"

Mabel watched the little boy wonder over her Christmas present from last year, and a curious feeling wormed in her stomach. Sara was paying attention to their commotion now, but looked no savvier than Wirt. "You guys aren't, like, Amish or anything, right?" she asked nervously as Greg displayed the screen with aplomb _("It moves when you touch it!")_ , and Beatrice just looked at all of them like they were speaking Greek. "Oh my God, have we been blaspheming in front of you this whole time?!" But even as she asked the question, she was starting to reobserve some small quirks of their persons that she'd thought inconsequential before – the quality of denim and the cut of Sara's jeans, how fastidious both Wirt and Greg were about keeping their shirts tucked in, the marshmallowy plainness of all their sneakers. It was just strange enough to notice. She'd thought at first that maybe they just came from a small town, but the only time she'd ever seen kids her own age dressing by such stark fashion cues was on Retro Night back when she was a sophomore in high schoo–

Oh, there was no way.

Wirt looked utterly nonplussed as Greg shoved the smartphone into his hands, babbling happily. Out of the corner of her eye, she thought she saw Dipper's expression change, and maybe he was following her same train of thought, but she was a lot less intent on him than on Greg; her mouth suddenly felt dry. As the little boy proudly shared with his big brother the phone's incredible capability to turn its screen on and off, Mabel asked, as offhanded as she could, "Hey, Greg?" He looked up. "What, uh… what year were you born?"

He tilted his head and said, as casually as if sharing the time: "1974."

Dipper froze, and then actually clapped a hand to his eyes, an expression of exasperation made to conceal fear. Mabel sat for just a second with a burning thrill in her stomach; "Oh, no way."

"No way," Dipper agreed, eyes still covered. "Not a chance, he's just wrong. Little kids get dates wrong all the time."

Wirt was quick to jump to his brother's defense. "Sorry? I think Greg knows when his own birthday is."

"This can't be happening," Dipper continued, and removed his hand from his face by way of dragging it up through his hair. "It _can't._ The Time Anomaly Removal Crew promised we would never run into any more issues like this again –"

"Hoooly crap, guys," Mabel said, and started rocking back and forward on the ground with her sweater pulled over her knees. "Just – wow, crap, oh my God. Oh my God. You guys. We're from –"

"Don't tell them, Mabel." Her brother's voice cut in over hers like a joy-killing knife. "Don't say anything, the less they know the less we run the risk of paradox –"

She had already steamrolled on, though, and the weight of her words held too much momentum to be stopped. Mabel sat forward on her knees and cried, "We're from the _future!"_ with outflung arms and sparkling eyes. Her voice was harsh in their small shelter, but the line had a less dramatic impact than she would have liked. Greg frowned with a puzzled look, Wirt and Sara glanced at one another skeptically, and Beatrice just threw up her hands as if to indicate that she had completely given up on understanding even a single word of this conversation.

For a second no one spoke; and then Jason Funderburker asked with rising inflection, _"Rorpp?"_

"Yeah," Greg said, and tilted his head to the side. "What do you mean by _future?"_

 _"Nothing,"_ Dipper insisted. Mabel ignored him.

"I mean that we both got stuck here on Halloween," she put her hands on the ground before her and bore down, almost in a crouch, "but not the _same_ Halloween. And I think yours happened a long time before ours." She glanced between faces; there were finally starting to manifest the expressions of wonder and worry she'd anticipated before, and she had everyone's attention captured neatly.

"…How long are we talking, here?" Sara asked, audibly walking the wire between skeptical and credulous.

Mabel was about to answer, but Dipper beat her to it, apparently having decided that his denial-ship had sailed. "Long enough," he said, and his voice sounded so very tired that it almost felt like a sock under the eye just to hear it. "Our _dad_ was born in 1974."

No words for a minute. Wirt said, "You're kidding me. Right?"

"Nuh-uh," Greg said, surprisingly hotly. "She has the Star Trek toys, Wirt!"

"Yeah, seriously though, we have to put that away," Dipper said, and reached for the phone in Greg's hand. "You shouldn't know any more about the future than you already do, the fabric of space-time could be even thinner right now than –" But suddenly he stopped, his hand frozen in the air as his brows furrowed. The group stared. "Oh, crap," Dipper choked after a second, and sat back down with a thump. "Greg, how old are you?"

The little boy seemed more than happy that everyone had so many questions to ask him lately. "Eight and almost-a-half," he said, chest puffed.

"Eight," Dipper said faintly. "That's what I thought. And that means you all had this happen to you on Halloween of –"

"It's 1982." Wirt sat back on the heels of his hands, still looking unconvinced. "So?"

But Mabel recognized the look in her brother's eyes. The mechanisms in his brain were turning, the gears with so many more teeth than her own whirring fast enough that she could practically hear them. "Jesus," he said, and pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingers. "Are you hearing this, Mabel?"

She said, "I don't –" But it seemed like he hadn't really been waiting for her answer anyway.

"1982," he said, and laid his hands together with angry emphasis, "was the year of the first portal activation. Stan never told us the exact date, you know? But he never said it _didn't_ happen on Halloween, either." She blinked at him dumbly. "We knew this had to have something to do with Gravity Falls, we knew that, but we didn't know _what._ But here are a bunch of people tossed in from the past, and their time aligns almost perfectly with the portal's first activation –" He stood up halfway, bonked his head on a limb, and sat back down again distractedly. "I bet you anything, Mabel. I bet you the portal was opened again three nights ago, and that's how all this started."

"I'm sorry, portals?" Sara asked, voice clearly only just staying on this side of nervous giggles.

"Our _uncle,"_ Dipper shot bitterly, "built a portal that punches holes through worlds and lets things crawl through if you're not careful." He picked a leaf from the toe of his shoe and shoved an angry thumb through its center. "It opened up for the first time in 1982, and again in 2012 –" ("Two thousand _twelve?"_ Wirt asked incredulously) "– and I almost guarantee you it's been opened for a third time now."

"That doesn't –" Sara's mouth was buried in the palm of her hand, her brows furrowed deeply. Her expression looked so much like Dipper's that Mabel almost did a double-take. "I don't understand why a door just _opening_ a few times over the years would do what you say. Mess up time. If that's really what happened."

"Because it cuts holes through dimensions," said Dipper, "and time is a dimension, too. The portal actually shares most of its same basic technology with the time machines that they use in 207̃012 –"

"Alright," said Wirt, "now I _know_ you're messing with us," but Greg bade him _"Shh!"_

"– And look where we've ended up!" Dipper raised a hand, spread his fingers at the dripping trees and slivered gray sky. "Piedmont was run over by trees until it disappeared, trees from a – from _someplace else,_ and a place you say you've visited before. Maybe three portal activations was too many, I don't know, maybe it knocked too many bars out of the scaffolding that was holding the multiverse together, but now –" He dropped his arm again. "Our world got all mixed up with another one. And we're the only ones left to tell about it."

He stopped, looking like he was waiting for someone to respond to what he was saying, but nobody did. All of them sat in silence, staring off in different directions, while the rain pattered the foliage high above them. Then a question to occurred to Mabel, and she asked, "Why?"

"Why what?"

"Why _are_ we the only ones left to tell about it?" Dipper frowned at her. "Why us?" They must have been the six kids on Earth best suited to deal with broken worlds and broken time. That seemed an awful coincidence.

But her brother shook his head. "I don't know."

"You're _really_ being serious right now?" Wirt asked one more time. "Time travel? I can't -"

Unexpectedly, though, it was Greg who had an answer for him. "Unknown Time is weird," he said wisely. "Last time it was always Halloween even when it wasn't, remember, Wirt? Maybe it's _all_ the Halloweens, and we just didn't know before."

Mabel spared a glance toward Beatrice. The taller girl was looking not at Dipper, but at Wirt, and her frown was deep and pained. "Bea?" Mabel said. She started.

"What?" she asked defensively.

"Are you okay?"

"I'm _fine,"_ she said with great emphasis, and turned her head and said nothing of it for the rest of the night.

The remainder of the afternoon was spent resting under the cover of the trees. It was almost cozy, even if they couldn't make a fire; Mabel found comfort in their closeness, as they huddled together carefully in the bare dry spots left to the world. A few times Beatrice tried to stand to see if she could walk again, and each time she did Wirt and Sara persuaded her back to the ground so that she didn't make things worse, their voices full of matched concern. When Dipper wasn't looking, Mabel showed Greg how to play the games on her phone, and pressed a conspiratorial finger to her lips. Paradoxes schmaradoxes; she wasn't so sure this was a world where the normal time-rules even applied, and anyway, the poor kid deserved something fun to distract him from everything right now. As he bent happily over the glowing screen, she puzzled over the idea of him as he must have been before the world ended, a man the same age as their father, maybe with kids of his own – but she couldn't do it. He leaned against her lap, small and sturdy, and she was quietly gratified to have him there exactly as he was.

"Hey," she murmured to Sara out of the corner of her mouth, while Dipper and Wirt once again tried to convince Beatrice to stop walking around, "I wanna ask you a question."

"Okay."

"What's the Cold War like?"

"Oh. Not great, I guess."

"Yeah, that's what all the movies said. Were they still doing duck-and-cover drills in the 80s?"

Sara murmured back, "It actually makes me really uncomfortable that you keep referring to my entire life up to this point as a relic of the past," and Mabel supposed she could understand that.

"Oh, okay. Sorry." She fidgeted for a minute and then blurted, "Dipper wouldn't want me to tell you this, but it's gonna get better, you know?" The other girl looked up at her. "We're friends with Russia again in like twenty years. The world doesn't end in nuclear Armageddon. For what it's worth."

"I guess that's nice to know." Sara smiled wryly. "Even if it _does_ end in encroaching wilderness instead, huh?" Mabel grinned, but then stopped. Her tone didn't sound like she was really joking.

That evening, when the shadows charcoaled and swallowed the understory, the noises in the woods were as bad as they'd ever been. Rolling, guttural moans seemed to come from behind every tree, sometimes only feet away from them, but there was never anything there when they looked. Still, as Mabel settled on the ground under the blanket between Beatrice and Sara, blind in the shrieking darkness, she couldn't help feeling sort of thrilled. They were still hungry, and cold, and confused, and they had a long way to go to reach Gravity Falls – but there was something directing their movements now. They didn't know why they had found each other, but it wasn't for no reason. They were in this together, and always had been, and she had two warm bodies on either side of her. Nothing was going to be easy, but everything was going to be okay. She could feel it.

Rain fell persistent on their small encampment at the base of eternity, and all of them slept surprisingly well that night.

* * *

 **As you can probably guess, it is at this point that I have to officially abandon my oft-broken promise to Sunday updates. I am a little stymied by events unfolding during Gravity Falls' Weirdmageddon arc, and am further slowed by wanting to see exactly where things end up so that I know how close I can stick to canon before having to branch off in order to satisfy my pre-ATOTS setup. I certainly don't anticipate taking any more three-month breaks, but expect from here on out to see updates happening closer to twice a month (I hope!).**

 **Now maybe my tastes are on the strange side, but I personally think this chapter pairs well with a certain writing prompt I filled back during the summer, and recommend you check out:** **tinyurl [dot com] / qa4jgt9**

 **For fun and profit, visit my blog at whiggitymacabee. tumblr. com!**


	8. The Worst Life Has to Offer

**This sonovabitch chapter is twelve and a half thousand goddamn words long what the hell was I thinking oh my God**

8

He should have been worried, but he wasn't, and _that_ was the really worrisome part.

Wirt woke in the morning when a heavy cold raindrop landed in the center of his forehead, and opened his eyes to a forest dense with the white noise of mist. Greg was nuzzled up against his arm, snoring in the warm spot under the blanket between him and Dipper, and Wirt was self-consciously surprised at how contented he felt with existence just then. He laid on his back, gaze drifting in the maze of tree branches layered across the gunmetal-gray sky; the air was temperate, the world was still, and for the first time since Halloween, it seemed like things were really sort of… okay. Of course he recognized just how unusual that was. Wakefulness was usually the cold open to a day-long gauntlet of fighting off the certainty that they were all going to die hungry and lost, in a world where they would not be remembered or mourned. As he raised a hand to wipe the dribble of water from his hairline, he started running mental tests to see if he felt troubled yet, but he felt nothing much at all.

For a while he didn't move. Spare birdsong sparkled between the sounds of falling rain and his little brother's breath on his shoulder, but his ears perked at something more subtle – a resonating whisper running underneath the earth, a deep wordless rumble just off the edge of audibility that had been sneaking between the trees since the day before. It was a strangely pervasive sound, but no one else had said anything about hearing it, and he didn't want to make people worry. If he laid still long enough, he could almost feel it shudder his hands where they curled in the soil.

Then someone hissed, " _Hey,"_ and he turned to look at Beatrice under the other blanket with Mabel and Sara, lying with her head in the pillow of her arm. "You're awake."

"Yeah," he whispered back, testing to see if he could sit up, but Greg nuzzled more deeply into his side when he moved. "How… how do you feel this morning?"

"I haven't tried moving my leg yet." Her hair spilled over the ground around her head in a titian cloud, and her eyes were colorless in the dull morning light. She looked very tired. "It kept waking me up, though. The pain." The deep laceration on her jaw was heavily scabbed and the flesh around it inflamed. It hurt his heart to imagine how her leg must be.

She sniffed and rolled her portion of the blanket away, sliding backward on the needly ground as she tried to sit up. Her face screwed tightly as she adjusted her hips, and she let out a hiss of pain. In a moment's determination, Wirt pulled his arm away from Greg, and the little boy rolled over into the small of Dipper's back instead as his brother crawled over to give Beatrice something to brace herself against. "Help me stand up," she hissed. Even with his aid, the effort that it took had her biting her lip till it turned white. Mabel sniffed and rolled over, but didn't wake.

When they got Beatrice to her feet, she was trembling, but jerked her chin toward the woods. They did their quietest to duck out from the copse and were able to straighten when they left cover, with her leaning heavily on his shoulder. Under her freckles, she was very pale. Nonetheless, she put on a dry smile and croaked, "Want to go for a walk?"

"I don't think –"

"Alright, I wasn't really asking. Let's go."

He supported her obligingly as she started to move forward, but said, "You're going to hurt yourself."

"I don't need you to tell me my limits. I hate staying still." In moving on, she compelled him to do the same. Their mulching steps kept awkward sync with one another as they slipped between the trees. Wirt could hear the rain falling around them, but little of it seemed to be making it to the understory. It was hard to keep his eyes off of Beatrice, though he tried not to stare; the jeans-and-t-shirt look was strangely mesmerizing on her. It seemed wrong, but it looked right. Her breath puffed white around her head: _"Shit,_ it's cold this morning." Her free arm tightened across her ribs.

"Really?" Wirt felt fine. He hesitated, and then said, "…Here," and pulled his cloak around her shoulders. He feared it might be a bit much, but she seemed grateful. A few dozen yards from the camp, they stopped, and Beatrice turned her face up to the parchment sky. Their view was framed by the long black limbs of trees scrabbling toward the firmament, and the birds were becoming more raucous as the morning rounded out. Misty raindrops freckled their cheeks, and a frown crossed Beatrice's face.

"I'm going to slow us down a lot today, huh?"

"No you're not." She gave him a look. "I mean… Yeah, okay, but that's… We're going to be alright –"

But impatiently, she sighed, "No, Wirt. We're probably not." She pulled away from him in irritation and the cloak slipped off of her shoulder; he surreptitiously pushed it back up. "I _hate_ when people try to pretend things aren't as bad as they are. Especially you. You're terrible at being optimistic."

"Oh. I'm s-sorry –"

"No, okay, well…" She crossed her arms and craned her head up at the treetops, looking flustered. "I mean, in some ways it's a good thing. Optimism is just another kind of lying, after all, so I guess… I appreciate your honesty." The recantation was unexpected, and gratifying. He looked down at her, but she wouldn't meet his gaze, so he, too, turned to the sky, and tried not to concern himself with her just being the way she was.

Then she blurted, "We've been here before, you know." He looked back at her, and this time she responded in kind. "Under this dumb cape together, I mean. I remember, way back the last time, it was raining and you pulled me and Greg under it with you to stay warm." She tugged her corner of the cape across her chest, as far as it would go. "We were both a lot smaller, back then. I think it was a better fit."

Her skin was very warm against his, and his brain stuck absorbedly on that thought for a moment until the troubling idea occurred to him that she could be running a fever. He started to move, and then stopped, and then abandoned his trepidation and put his arm around her shoulder and held her a little closer, for support and warmth. Red rose in her cheeks, but she didn't seem to really mind. A robin redbreast fluttered down to a tree branch not far from them and twittered happily. Beatrice grimaced. "Birds are so full of it."

Wirt felt about as well-prepared to respond to that as he did to a full sixty percent of the things Greg ever said. "Um."

"I have a question."

"Okay, shoot."

"What's the future like?"

The query stumbled him. He turned in surprise and found himself inhaling a noseful of red hair. "I – _snrt_ – what?" he asked, patting the wild locks down with his free hand.

"Well not that any of you really bothered to bring me into the conversation last night, but I was still there." She squared her shoulders and her jaw. "And I'm not mad about that. Really. I'm… not in the loop with the rest of you and I don't understand a lot of the things you talk about – fine. But," she turned her penetrating blue gaze on him, "I'm not stupid. I heard what Mabel's brother said. Something is wrong with time." Wirt's mouth felt very dry. "The twins said they're from the future. And I thought –" She regarded him imperiously. "You must be too. Right?"

Slowly, he pulled his arm away, releasing her from their half-embrace. He'd started to hope that they wouldn't ever have to have this conversation. "Beatrice –"

"Because I never realized before that you came from a place that had a future," she said in a rush, cheeks reddening, "and I guess that that must be why you –"

Then she stopped, and stepped away from him a little so the cloak trailed off of her shoulders again. She ran her eyes up and down his body in a way that made him feel strangely exposed, and then smiled, smally and sadly. It was the same look she'd given him on that winter evening, when he stood in the snow with his brother on his back and scissors in his hand, as a tall older girl in pale blue straightened up from a pile of bloodstained feathers and gave him a pursed smirk. She wasn't older than him anymore, though, nor taller. He turned away with his fingers in his hair.

"So," she croaked through a half-smile, "what's the future like, then?"

Dull panic bubbled in his stomach. "You… you'd have to ask Dipper about that." The cloudy sky roiled in the starburst cracks in the canopy. "I think we're all pretty far out of our times, now." Truth be told, he wasn't eager to talk about it. He'd never been the sort of person to expend his anxiety on the far future – he preferred to focus on the things that were about to go wrong imminently – but there was a bitter taste to the knowledge that he and everybody he knew was just walking a path that had been carved out for them decades ago. "I just realized," he said without thinking, "how old I actually am in the time Dipper and Mabel come from. Like fifty. Maybe older." Beatrice was looking at her feet. "I'll be out of college for a decade and a half before they're even _born,_ Beatrice _._ Am I – I mean, what's going to change? Do I have kids? How's Greg? Is my mom doing okay? Who am I in two thousand _twelve?"_ The date still sounded absurd. He was holding his fists so tight that he had sharp crescents pressured into his palms. His eyes were still searching the textured sky when five fingers wrapped around his wrist, and Beatrice held it securely.

"Things don't _have_ to change," she said, in a softer version of her impatient _obviously_ -voice that he knew so well.

He licked his lips. "Maybe not for you."

"Yeah, so, clearly it isn't required." She tightened her hand around his forearm and her face pinkened again. He felt touched by her attempt to comfort, but was chilled by the proposition she didn't even know she was making. When he'd dreamed of the Unknown through the years, they often were breathless dreams, visions of a golden wood that called tantalizingly to him even as his lungs screamed for air, until he gave up to break through the surface of the water and woke gasping in bed. Beatrice didn't know just how close he and Greg had come to drowning during their descent into the wilderness, and she wasn't _wrong_ that there was a way to avoid growing up if he so chose, but he didn't know how to tell her why it wasn't his preferred option.

He swallowed, and to put off speaking, twisted his wrist out of her grasp and took her hand instead. It was so much smaller than his. She stiffened, but didn't pull away.

A raindrop hit his cheek and he absently wiped it. Beatrice looked up, aghast. "Are you crying?"

"What? Oh, no –" He straightened up correctively. "No, I just… The rain."

"Oh. Sure." And she bowed her head again. They stood shoulder-to-shoulder, hand-in-hand under the shared cloak, and didn't speak for a while. Her grip on his fingers tightened and slackened in small cycles, and her exposed midriff was pressed close to the knuckles of his left hand. Mabel's jeans hung low on her hips. It was hard to see with her standing so close, but he could still see. He consciously checked to ascertain that his breath stayed even through that realization.

The resonating hum running beneath their feet seemed to be growing deeper, and he shifted his weight uncomfortably. Actually, it was a halfway-welcome distraction from her.

"Do… do you hear that too?" he ventured.

Beatrice looked around, and a concerned expression crossed her face. "…Yeah," she said after a moment, and pulled her hand away from his. "I think I do." He was momentarily relieved that he wasn't going mad, but when he opened his mouth to speak she hissed, _"Shh!"_ and jabbed him with her elbow. Her eyes were on the ivy-tangled distance and her tension was visible in her face. Wirt swallowed. He suspected they were not hearing the same thing, and had that confirmed as she lifted a slow finger.

"Do you see it?" she asked shakily. Wirt stared into the gray masses of the forest and was about to say no when one of those masses blinked at him. His eyes widened and he, unthinking, put his hands around Beatrice's shoulders to pull her behind him. The creature in the distance blinked again, and then slunk out of sight.

In the stillness of its disappearance, he realized his heart was thundering. "Was that the wolf?" he squeaked. His head filled with the vivid recollection of an animal suspended in the air before him, yellow teeth seconds from his throat. "W-we should – we should go back to the camp and –"

But he was interrupted by a great cracking squawk that startled him so badly he jumped into the air and clutched at Beatrice like a cartoon character. A large white bird – it looked like a crow? – had landed in the branches above and seemed to be cackling at them.

 _"Korrrrrrk,"_ it cried, bobbing its head emphatically. Wirt was too busy recovering from his near-heart attack to notice at first that Beatrice's expression had gone sour. The crow keened again and she furrowed her brows at it.

"How could you possibly know that?" she whispered under her breath.

"What?"

She stared pursed-lipped at the bird for a second as it quorked once more, and then turned away. "We'll talk about this later," she said, and she was looking his way when she did, but he didn't feel like the words were for him. Unsteadily, she took him by the arm and started pulling him toward the camp. He glanced back at the bird, which regarded him with a supremely self-satisfied expression, and then jogged to catch up with Beatrice. She moved quickly for someone with an injured leg.

He started, "What was –?"

"I said later." She stepped haughtily down a small incline, and landed the stride with a strangled cry. He rushed forward to help her up as she straightened. "…Thanks." She wiped a sheen of sweat from her brow. She was very pale. Her weight rested against him briefly and she closed her eyes.

He waited. "Are you alright?"

From a few feet behind them, the crow squawked one last time. "I'm fine," she said after a moment. "Or I will be. I'll be okay." She hesitated, and then determinedly stood up again.

Wirt tried to smile comfortingly, but gave up because he knew he was probably doing a terrible job of it. "I, uh, thought optimism was just another kind of lying." He hoped it came off as the rib it was meant as.

But Beatrice didn't laugh. "I'm not being optimistic, I'm making you a promise." Her blue eyes were mirthless. "And I don't break promises."

"Like that promise you made to bring us to the Good Woman of the Woods?"

 _Wait oh no no no no –_

The words spilled from his grinning mouth before he thought to stop them, and hurt cut Beatrice's face instantaneously. His own incredible stupidity fell across his shoulders like a ton of bricks. "I mean, wait – crap, no, Beatrice, I didn't – I'm sorry –"

She didn't say anything, but started to limp away from him, staring straight ahead. He took a necessary second to bash himself in the face with the heel of his palm before stumbling up ahead and taking her by the arms. "I'm sorry," he insisted, directing her face up at his. "That – that was the stupidest thing I've ever said –"

"Not even close to true," she said coolly.

An unexpectedly contrary flame sparked in his stomach. He snapped, "You know, you don't have to _always_ be this way." Her eyebrows raised in disbelief. "I'm trying to apologize to you. I – Jesus Christ, I just did something horrible and I'm trying to _apologize_ to you, Beatrice!"

"No, I deserved it," she said, still tepid. "You're absolutely right, Wirt. My promises aren't worth all that much. I can't believe I'd forgotten."

"That's not –" He grabbed two fistfuls of his own damp hair and left the locks standing on end. "You're going to twist everything I say until it's ugly, aren't you? You're so good at seeing _ugly_ everywhere –"

"Oh, yeah, not like a sensitive poet like you, finding beauty in the darkest places, right, Wirt?" she spat. _"Please._ You're just as bad as I am. You just hide it behind neurosis and expect people to think it's _cute_."

He threw up his hands and turned in a small, can-you-believe-this-shit circle, condensing long-in-the-making frustration on his tongue to throw back at her with as much force as he could muster – but when he brought his gaze back up to hers he faltered. Beatrice stood straight and stiff, jaw set and arms crossed defensively, but she kept blinking, fluttering her lids. Hard as she tried to keep it under control, her breath was wracked. Moistness pooled direly at the edges of her eyes. His desire to lash out was instantly diluted; he dropped his arms, at a loss for words. "Beatrice…"

Another involuntary blink brought forth more tears, and finally her hardness yielded. She grimaced and wiped at her eyes with the heel of her palm. He reflected with sudden clarity that it had been indescribably cruel and stupid of him to give in to his desire to drop to her level for once. Of course she'd used anger to mask hurt. She used anger to mask _everything._ "Beatrice, I-I'm so sorry…"

She shook her head and didn't say anything. The rain was starting to pick up harder, and cold water ran down the bridge of his nose. On some naïve, grade-school level he'd never imagined that he could really hurt her, not deeply, not at _all_. He was the sensitive one between them. She was just… Beatrice. After a moment she straightened up and took a steadying, watery breath. "You don't have anything to apologize for," she said thickly. "It was always a miracle that you were willing to forgive me for what I did. I took it for granted."

"No," he protested weakly. "No, you – you thought you didn't have a choice. That's…" His brain looked desperately for purchase somewhere. "I – I don't blame you anymore. I don't know if I ever really did."

"You should have. I'm not a good person, I never was." She paused to chew on her lip. "I won't do it, you know, but sometimes I… I really think things would be easier if I just went back to lying to you about what I want."

He didn't know how to respond to that. He stood dumb in front of her until his shoulders slumped and the cloak fell protectively closed. He shrugged like a child. Somewhere in the forest, almost too distant to hear, a wolf's howl threaded between the strains of birdsong and hushed atmosphere. Wirt was not gripped with fear as he'd expected. It didn't sound very threatening, really, just… sad. Beatrice followed the source of the noise with her eyes.

"Hey, that's right," she said dully. "We were trying to get back to the others so we don't get eaten by a wild animal, weren't we."

But her delivery pierced Wirt's dolor so that he couldn't help smiling, just a little, and he didn't feel bad about it because she wasn't looking at him anyway. He took a deep breath, and then took a minute to think, and finally reached out and took her hand again. "Hey. Beatrice?" She rolled her head across her shoulders toward him, looking doubtful. He used the cloak to dry her cheeks, during which she refused to make eye contact with him. "I – I really think if I had to face down another wolf, I'd rather it be with you than anyone else."

She snorted wetly. "Because we're both real pieces of work that everyone else would be better off without, right?"

"Well, I – no, I mean, because I _trust_ y–" She elbowed him bashfully and shook her head, but she was smirking. He hesitated, and then elbowed her back, gently. Beatrice returned it with greater force and a wet snort, and then real laughter as he wound up a jab, realized he couldn't in good conscience relay it, and told her he'd get her back for real once her leg was better. When he tried to walk again she kept pace with him, hand still pressed heavily into his as he supported her right steps. Steadily, the tearstains on her cheeks started to fade.

When the copse where they'd spent the night came back into view, he saw that Sara was sitting outside the edge of the trees, knees tucked inside her bomber jacket. She glanced up at their approach, and Wirt was struck with worry of whether she could see their fingers entwined under the cloak. He almost snatched his hand away, but fought the impulse.

If Sara did notice, she gave no indication. She had dark circles under her eyes, but smiled at them nonetheless. "Morning," she croaked.

Beatrice beat Wirt to the requisite response. "Hey."

"How's your leg?"

"It hurts. It's okay. Is everyone still sleeping?"

"I think they're waking up." She turned where she sat. Mabel stirred beneath the girls' blanket, while Dipper and Greg were still lumps under theirs. "I've been up since you guys left." Wirt was just paranoid enough to interpret her words as a condemnation, but he reminded himself there was nothing to condemn. His heart just needed gentle reassurance when Sara was around, was all.

Beatrice eased herself back to the ground and Sara pulled out Greg's candy bag in search of breakfast. Almost immediately, Mabel rolled toward them and lifted her head. "'Zat candy?" she mumbled from under a curtain of hair.

"Unfortunately," Sara said.

"Speak for yourself." Mabel threw back the blanket and crawled toward them hungrily, digging a foot into her brother's side on the way. "C'mon, Dip! Breakfast time."

 _"Mmmn."_ Dipper rolled over almost onto Greg before hoisting himself up, stuck all over with pine needles. "Alrigh', alrigh', I'm coming." He added a chorus of yawns to their company as they sat down to eat. Halfway through a caramel-cookie bar, Wirt looked to see if Greg was going to join them; their commotion should have woken him, but he was still curled tight under the blanket on the ground. Sudden unease twisted his stomach, and he stuffed the rest of the candy into his mouth as he crept over toward his brother.

"Greg?" he whispered. The little boy didn't move. His face was slack and his fists were tight. Wirt brushed a gentle thumb along his cheek. "Greg? It's time to wake up."

The child's brows furrowed lightly. He murmured in a dream-heavy voice, _"Bu' I don' understan' the rules…"_ and Wirt shook him again. Even after Greg's eyes opened, he looked exhausted.

"Hey," Wirt said gently, and laid a hand on his shoulder. "Are you alright?"

Greg didn't answer right away. He shouldered down into the blanket and sighed. "Yeah, I'm okay." He peered sleepily up at the canopy above them. "Do you ever think about how weird trees are, Wirt?"

"Not so much."

"Hmm. _I_ do." He sat up slowly, rubbing a fist under his nose, and then perked with what looked like a sudden realization. Wirt was about to ask him again to join them for food when Greg shifted onto his knees and muttered, "Hold on a tick –"

His eyes swept the surface area of the blanket for a second before pulling it back from the place where he'd been sleeping. Beneath, a dozen lush green strawberry plants were sprouted up around a Greg-shaped spot in their center. They unfurled slowly in response to daylight's touch, and their jewel-red fruit was the richest color Wirt had seen in days.

The young man stared at the plants with a dumbness that, after comprehension, turned to low horror. One or two had wrapped thin vines around Greg's sneakers, and Wirt's breath hitched as he remembered his five-year-old brother standing, fading, choked by the Edelwood. He reached out and tore away the creepers as quickly as he could, but before he had a chance to speak Greg had already leapt to his feet and cried, "Guys! Guys, look what I found!"

Dipper glanced casually over his shoulder and did a double-take when he saw what Greg was summoning them for. "What the –?" He crouched at the edge of the sudden strawberries and picked one like he couldn't believe his eyes. It dropped from the vine as easily as if it were June. "These – these weren't here when I woke up…"

"Oh my God. Is that real fruit?" Sara asked, wide-eyed. "Real _food?"_

Beatrice said, "Holy crap," and Mabel crawled over and popped one into her mouth. Momentarily Wirt was at a loss, struggling with thoughts of what Greg had said two nights past _("I grew them, Wirt! I grew a strawberry!")_. He wanted to reach out and grab his brother and hold him tight, up away from the earth that seemed be trying to do him so many favors. Dipper ate his berry as well, and Sara came up and picked one for Beatrice and one for herself, and the looks of bliss that crossed each of their faces in turn were heart-rending to behold. Greg was watching them as well, positively aglow with pride, and when he turned to look at his big brother he beamed. The berries' nectar was thick in the air.

Slowly, Wirt reached out to pick a strawberry of his own, and it was as warm as if it had been growing all day in the sun. It tasted like the security of home, like his mom's homemade jam, and then he was even more grateful to be eating, because food made it easier to swallow the lump in his throat.

The old, low rumble touched his ears again as he ate, an auricular thrum like breathing earth. If he focused, he wondered if he couldn't almost hear speech within it, hints of consonants concealed inside a bass soundscape. He watched the others' faces as they gorged themselves on the miraculous feast before them. Nobody said anything. Nobody else heard.

He tried to enjoy himself, and determined that the bitterness on his tongue was just his own bad faith.

–

Despite Beatrice's commitment to honesty, there were a few lies she was still telling. The biggest one, by a large margin, was about how she was doing. She hurt much worse than she wanted to let on.

In more senses than one, come to think of it.

The others fussed over her as they embarked on their fifth day in the wilds, embarrassingly so. Nobody seemed to feel comfortable about walking too quickly within her eyesight, like she might be offended by their ease of mobility. "If you need me to carry you, I will," Greg took care to solemnly offer just before they started out.

"Thanks, Greg, but I'm okay." She rebuffed the same general offer from Mabel and Dipper and Wirt, little as she wanted to; it would have been much easier to indulge in their sympathy if she hadn't already put up such a strong front of not needing it. It took a little less than half a mile for them to fall into something like a procession, with Beatrice taking up the rear at considerable distance. Her leg was stiff and swollen and each limping step was hell on her hip, but she wanted as much space as possible, anyway.

She had a bone to pick with someone.

Looking disinterested was more difficult than she'd have thought; she had to focus very hard to appear not to notice as the white crow appeared again and began keeping pace with her, fluttering between tree branches every few seconds. She was gratified that it was the one to finally break the silence: "Still pretending you don't notice me, then?"

Beatrice glanced up and then rolled her eyes, exaggerated. "Oh, it's just you."

"Please," it said, unconcerned. "I'm the best conversation you're going to find in these woods. And I feel I deserve better treatment than this, either way. I've been nothing but helpful to you, Bluebird."

"You think that?" she snapped, dagger-eyed. "Because I could swear you were mostly just showing up at bad times to talk and see if you can get a rise out of me."

It admitted, "I _have_ found that a source of modest entertainment. But you do me wrong, you know." It fluffed its feathers smugly. "I saved your life yesterday, Bluebird, yours and your friends'."

Her deep-seated contrariness wanted to protest that they might have survived the wolf attack without advance warning, but she bit her tongue. That was petty even for her. "Yeah, well," she muttered, and then stifled a cry as her right ankle twisted wrong-footed on a stump, "forgive me for being a little wary of help given too freely. It's never really free, is it?" The crow seemed to chortle. "Are you going to repeat what you were saying this morning, now that we have a little privacy?"

Its croaky voice dripped mordancy. "Goodness, I really don't know. Can you possibly afford any more freely-given help?" It seemed to take her glower as response enough, because it continued, "All I said was that you have no reason to worry about the wolfling any longer. It won't bother you."

"Yeah, you did say that." Beatrice braced herself on a tree trunk as she passed it by. "Then I'm going to repeat my own question – how the hell could you know that?"

Not for the first time, the crow said, "I know everything that goes on in these woods," with a glimmer in its eye.

She paused to catch her breath by a fallen log. "You talk big."

"I talk truth." It cocked its head at her, and then flapped down to settle on a branch jutting from her log. Its white feathers were dun and scraggly-wet. "You don't have to believe me, but I _am_ working to your benefit."

Beatrice stood for a moment, both hands buried in the deep moss on the trunk and her eyes on the leaf-strewn ground. The air here smelled richly of decay. "I never asked for your help," she said after a moment, "and I've been difficult when you tried to offer it. Why _should_ I believe you'd be on my side after that?"

The crow said lightly, "You can hardly be blamed for your moods. Contempt is just in a bluebird's nature." When her expression darkened it seemed to almost roll its eyes. "You are a _mighty_ touchy one. I have a vested interest in the narrative you and your friends are writing, of course. I would like to see you succeed."

"Succeed in what, exactly?" she demanded.

The crow didn't respond for a moment, taking the time to regard her with an impassive brown eye. Birds' expressionlessness had always frustrated Beatrice; being able to understand an animal's words and understand what they are truly saying are two very different things, a problem not helped by their general lack of eyebrows. After a few seconds it answered, "I want you to succeed in pulling these poor mangled worlds apart again. And I would prefer they both still be as whole as possible after the surgery."

A faraway owl asked her name, and goosebumps prickled down Beatrice's spine. In a carefully-controlled voice, she said, "So it's true, then. Dipper was right, last night."

"Pine Tree knows more than he thinks," the bird said. "He's got a good brain in his skull – and a bad one, too, but let's focus on one problem at a time." It shook its head, and hit her with an unpleasant spray of water. She peered skeptically up at it for a moment. It stared back, and then turned to preen its feathers, apparently unconcerned with what she was thinking.

"You're not just some crow," she said. It didn't even look up. "You've got a dog in this fight, you said so yourself. So why are you acting so cryptic about what you want?"

"I really can't imagine any other way to be," it said loftily. If contempt was in a bluebird's nature, then obliqueness was certainly in a crow's. She frowned, and tilted her head at it, and then turned her tilt to the treetops. It was so quiet here. She couldn't hear the others anymore, and she was too tired and sore to care. Maybe she ought to just lie down next to the log and let moss grow on her. The others would be better off without her burden.

She didn't really feel that way, but self-pity was therapeutic.

"Did you have something to do with all this?" she asked.

"I'm sure I don't know what you mean."

"Are you the reason we're lost? Did you make this happen?"

"Heavens, no. All of this is me trying to clean up someone else's mess out of the goodness of my own heart."

"Why?"

The big white corvid puffed out its breast and pulled its head back, as if reclining. "I suppose I've been forced into the position of a – mediator, of sorts, these last few days. Cipher would love to see these woods grow wild through the Mindscape, of course. The rest of us, less so." It sounded strikingly bitter. "You have no idea how hard it is to superintend all these nightmare creatures born of primal fear. Most especially when one of them is so deeply distracted by its missing caretaker." Beatrice licked her lips, and was about to ask the crow what he knew about the Edelwood, the wolves – he knew everything about the forest, he said so himself – but was headed off as a small scrabble touched her ears. She turned toward it at the same time that the crow said, "Ah, and here we have company again!"

She sat up to see Greg pop out from behind a tree and come jogging toward her with a wave. "Dipper told me to make sure you didn't fall down and die!" he said cheerily, swiveling his saucepan so the handle cleared his view. His eyes flickered up to the crow, sitting on the broken limb just a feet from Beatrice's face, and he pulled up sharply. "Oh, sorry, I didn't realize you were conducting business here. …Hey, waitaminnit. I know you!" Over her protests, he scrambled up on top of the fallen log to get a closer look. "Hey, yeah! You're the ol' bird Beatrice was talkin' to the other day!" He held out a hand for an unreturnable shake. "My name's Greg. What's yours?"

The crow recoiled from his gesture. "Why, would you believe it, my name is also Greg," it muttered, testy.

Greg cupped a hand to his ear and said, "Sorry ma'am, I didn't catch that," but Beatrice prickled. The poor kid didn't deserve to be spoken to like that when he was just being friendly. Greg tugged on her elbow a little. "Do _you_ know his name?" he asked brightly. "Sorry, it's just I don't speak crow is all."

"Yeah, well, neither do I." She flushed when Greg frowned at her. He didn't look irritable, but disappointed.

"Oh, are we doing _this_ whole song-and-dance again, then?" the crow asked, deeply unimpressed. "Perhaps I really ought to go, I can't have my patience drained this early in the day –"

She protested, "No no, don't –" and then stopped. Greg's eyes were big. She looked between him and the crow and then steeled herself. "Look, don't go," she said levelly to the bird. "I… want to hear what you have to say."

While Greg gasped under his breath, " _She_ does _speak crow!"_ the big bird flapped its wings and threw its head back. _"Finally,_ she cares to listen!" it cried. "Unfortunately, it's just in time for me to feel I have little left to say." Beatrice gaped as it took wing toward the canopy.

"Hold on, hold on!" she cried to it where it landed in the branches of a weeping cedar. "You can't go, we were just getting somewhere!"

"There's not much elsewhere I can take you just now," it called down to her. "But I think you'll find some other heads full of interesting words if you go –" it jabbed its beak in a westerly direction "– that-a-way."

"Wait, what?" she asked, straining upward as Greg took her arm, asking to know what the bird was saying. "What do you mean? Like right here?" She pointed to an avenue through the trees.

"Follow the tracks!" the crow said gleefully, and spread its wings. "You can thank me later, Bluebird. Keep an eye on your little beast down there." And it swept away into the gray sky. Beatrice watched it go with a tight ball of frustration sitting beneath her collarbone, until Greg stood up on the log and walked over to wrap his arms around her neck.

"You looked sad," he said before she had a chance to ask. His damp sweater was itchy against her skin, and it made her feel unexpectedly emotional. Tears prickled at her eyes, and she was glad when he pulled away with a big smile.

"So you _can_ talk to crows!" he said happily. "I knew it! That was the best conversation I never understood any of! What do crows talk about?"

"I can't say I'm really sure." She frowned at the place where it had disappeared.

"Oh. Well, that's alright." Jason Funderburker made a low ribbit. "Hey Beatrice?"

"What, Greg?"

"Why did you say no?"

The question jostled her from her contemplation of the crow's parting words. "What?"

"Well, you've kept tryna say you don't understand crows, but you do. Why?"

She stared at her feet, still in the ever-strange but incredibly comfortable shoes that seemed so common in whatever place Greg came from. "I don't know," she said, with dull realization at the admittance. "I just don't think it's anyone's business."

"But why?" Greg insisted. "That's the coolest thing I ever heard of!"

"I don't know, Greg," she said again, more irascible this time. "It's something left over from when I was a bird, too. I just don't want people knowing about it. It makes me feel bad."

"Oh." He looked pensive at that, and sat down on the log, kicking his legs thoughtfully. "Wasn't there _anything_ good about being a bird?"

"Not much. A whole lot of eating dirt and not having thumbs." She frowned. "Flying was fine, I guess."

"Yeah!" he exclaimed, and stood up again with his arms wide. "So you had to eat dirt, but you also got to fly! And talking to birds makes you sad, but also if you look at it objectively, it's _really neat,_ right? Things can be good and bad at the same time. So just think about the good stuff!" She halfway smiled at him. "Also I really, _really_ wanna know what birds talk about."

"Mm. Mostly… bugs. And eggs."

"That makes a lot of sense!" Jason Funderburker popped out of his sweater and said, _"Rorrp."_ "Did that crow tell you why he's the wrong color?"

"No."

"Did he say what his name was?"

"No."

"…Theeen what did he want to talk about?" He rocked back and forward on his heels.

She sighed. "He said… That we're going the wrong way."

"Wrong way!" Greg gasped, clapping his hands over his mouth. "Oh no! Dipper thought we were going the _right_ way!" He stood up determinedly. "We gotta tell them! I'll run!"

"Yeah, but –" She reached out to stop him as he made to jump down. "Listen, you can tell them we should change direction, alright? But just say that I thought I saw someone go that way. Nothing about birds."

Greg blinked at her once, and then his eyes grew wide. "You want me to _lie?"_ he asked, stunned.

"No! I mean…" She dropped her shoulders and stared at him in frustration. "It's not a big lie."

"But it's still _lying."_

"It's… it's alright if it's about keeping a secret, Greg." But she knew perfectly well that that was pretty weak. He seemed truly upset. She pinched the bridge of her nose. "Look… People are worried about me enough right now." She pointed a plaintive hand at her leg. "And if everyone knows about the birds, they'll have a whole new thing to worry about." Greg shuffled his feet with an expression of deep concern. "I'll tell them some other time. For now I just don't want people to know. Okay?"

He rubbed his nose and regarded her suspiciously. "…Tonight."

"What?"

"Tell them tonight." He squared his round little jaw. "I'll keep the secret but only if you promise to tell everyone the truth tonight."

"Why tonight?"

"I'll die otherwise."

"You will not die, Greg." He flopped over against the log forlornly. "Alright, _fine._ Tonight." That perked him up. _"Tonight._ But not now. For now it's a secret. Promise?"

"This seems like a silly secret."

 _"Promise,_ Greg."

He pulled his mouth down to the side. "I promise," he said, and raised his hand in a formal salute. "But you are an _odd duck,_ Beatrice."

"Yeah, I know. Now go on," she said. There was a little red leaf in his hair, sticking out from underneath his saucepan, and she reached to take it. It was surprisingly hard to remove, and made a little snap when it did.

"Ow," he complained, and rubbed his head. She raised an eyebrow at him and then at the leaf, but he seemed to have already moved on. He shot her a toothy grin, and then dashed off into the trees from whence he'd come, shouting, _"Wirt! Sara! Maple! Beatrice saw someone...!"_

She sat back and heaved a sigh. She wondered if the crow would return one last time, but there was no sound and no movement in the forest at all, other than from the sort of birds who had nothing to say about anything other than bugs, and eggs.

–

Sara didn't say so, but she was quietly glad that they were changing direction. Whether by intuition or intellection or just something in the wind, she was pretty sure they'd been going the wrong way for a while now.

Beatrice was, predictably, unforthcoming with the details of just who or what she had seen heading in her insisted westerly direction. "It just looked like a _person,_ okay?" she griped. "I'm not lying and I'm not trying to get us lost, I saw _something_ and I think we should check it out." There some sense that any direction was as good as any other at this point, so no one put up much of a fuss about the change in plans. Going was as slow as the day before, and no matter how much work Beatrice did to keep up, she fell increasingly further behind, looking less well with each passing mile. Her insistence that she needed no help made Sara hesitate to offer it in case it looked condescending. Wirt was not possessed of those reservations. Noon came and went, and they stopped to eat and change bandages, and he stayed close by the taller girl's side, helping her keep pace, saying little with his mouth but a lot with his face. Sara didn't mind.

No, really. She was just happy that the two of them were finally being good to one another. Wirt didn't owe her anything.

While Mabel and Greg played imagination games twenty feet behind, she found herself with Dipper in the vanguard, as usual. They were both fast walkers, and she enjoyed his company well enough. He was incisive, and self-aware, and his nose was perpetually pink and he was as bad about stumbling over his words as Wirt was. He could hold a conversation on chemical evolution and knew more than she thought possible about cryptozoology, and whenever he was deep in thought he rubbed the back of his head, so that his sleeves fell away from his sturdy forearms. His hair was wavy and his shoulders were broad and if she didn't think about it too hard, it was even pretty easy to pretend that she wasn't thirty years his elder. Good conceit. Keep it up, brain.

"So," she puffed as they hopped over a small gully one after the other, "you're telling me… there's no such thing as a female gnome."

"Doesn't seem like it."

"So they breed with _human women_ instead?"

"Jesus, Mabel was twelve, don't put it that way. But I guess?"

"Wow. And I thought Wirt and Greg's story was wild." She hitched her backpack up on her shoulders. "I still can't believe you're not joshing me about this Gravity Falls place."

"Swear on my birthmark," he said. "That summer was the realest thing that ever happened to me."

"That's incredible," she said. She squinted at the sky to see if there was any sign of a break in the clouds. "I can't believe there's a place like that in the world. I can't believe I've never _been_ there before."

"It's really something," he agreed. "Mabel has more stories than I do. She and her girlfriend did all the monster hunting after that first year, since, you know. I wasn't there."

There was a definite edge to his voice. She watched him closely to see if there was anything to read into there. "Why didn't you ever go back?"

He copied her action, in hitching his backpack up, as he deliberated his answer. "Some… stuff went down, at the end of the summer of '12," he mumbled, while she tried not to be distracted by the enormity of such a far-off date. "I didn't, uh… I didn't think I could deal with seeing my great-uncle again after that."

"I recall you saying something about, um… demonic possession."

"Yeah," he said awkwardly. "There was some of that." They walked for a minute without speaking. Sara cast an eye over her shoulder to make sure the others were keeping up. The more he told about that summer the more she wanted to know. It sounded too fantastic to be true, an entire enclave of beings and phenomena hitherto unknown to science. "Why in hell am I getting a degree in organic chem," she muttered, "when I could be wrangling centaurs in the mountains?"

Dipper let out a short bark of laughter and she looked up with a smile. "You know, I have spent _so much time_ wondering the same thing." He kicked at a wet stick and sent it flying. "What the hell is the point of a degree in the sciences when the laws of science can be broken at any time, right? Or journalism school, once you've experienced large-scale conspiracy and coverups firsthand?" He sighed. "My parents think I haven't sent out any college applications because I'm 'scared' of… growing up or whatever. You know? But I've done my growing up. I did that before my thirteenth birthday." He shoved his hands into his pockets. "Honestly… I just don't really see the point. I can't go back to Gravity Falls, but I can't leave it, either." He threw his chin up at the sky. "Or I couldn't go back, at least. I guess this whole clusterfuck kind of renders everything else pointless, doesn't it?"

"Mm," she said, trying not to betray how much she dearly hoped it didn't. "You know… I think we're going to be able to fix everything, Dipper. I do. It sounds like you and your sister have sorted out worse."

"We had more help, back then." He was quiet for a moment and then gave her a sad sort of smile. "Hey. If we do get the world fixed, you should really go."

"Where?"

"To Gravity Falls. There's so much to see. Maybe start a journal of your own. You could check out the UFO. Exorcise a ghost or two. Get a job working at the Mystery Shack and maybe we'd even see you when we…" But the proposition was interrupted by a dawning realization on his face. He started slowing down. "You – you could keep Stanley from rebuilding the portal in the first place. You could stop Bill from…"

He stopped walking.

Sara did too, and turned back to him. Dipper stood still between tree roots, staring off into nothing. His expression looked at war with itself. Mabel and Greg were drawing close behind them.

"Dipper?" Sara asked.

He started out of his stupor and focused on her. For a split second he had a terrible, alien look about him, hollow and mirthless, but he shook it away before she could be sure it was even real. He ducked his head and started walking again, seeming to want to avoid his sister seeing him distressed. Sara chewed her lip as he sped past her. "Dipper?" Had she done something wrong? "Are you okay?"

"Ayup," he said flatly, vaulting over a small fallen tree. "I'm fine." She was about to ask him the question again, with the expectation of truth this time, when he added, "It wouldn't work anyway, you know." She tilted her head. "I mean, I don't know about paradoxes _here_ , but it would definitely make Time Baby unhappy if we'd met in the real world in 2012. Bad idea. Don't do that." She smiled hesitantly and moved to catch up by jumping over the tree after him. Her foot landed on something surprisingly hard on the other side that sent an unpleasant shock up her ankle. When she came up to him, the last remnants of ugliness were gone from his face, replaced by run-of-the-mill exhaustion. She must have just imagined it. He shook his head and pulled his shoulders up protectively. "You know, I would have liked to know you in real life. I'm, uh… sorry that couldn't happen."

His eyes were avoidant, his body pulled as small as possible. He really sounded so very much like Wirt. "So am I," she said, voice artificially steady. He looked up and she forced a smile. "If we survive this, we'll meet up again someday, alright? We'll try." He nodded absently at the ground for a second and then turned it into a determined affirmative.

"Yeah," he said, and held out a hand to shake on it. His fingers were big and calloused. "Yes. Definitely. Absolutely."

His smile was never free of burden, but that added to its appeal, in a way.

They stood there for a second longer before being interrupted by a cloud of brown hair with a loud Mabel inside it. "Heyy, friends," she said as she popped up next to them and pulled them into a two-way embrace. "Whatcha agreeing to over here? Something secret? Something _sexy?"_

"We're agreeing on how to dispose of your body," Dipper frowned at her. She guffawed loudly and slapped him on the back.

"Hey Sara!" Greg said, running to greet them as well. "Sara! Listen! Sara. Sara. _Listen."_ He lowered his voice conspiratorially. "I know a secret."

"Yeah?" she asked.

"Yup!" And he bounced away again up the path ahead, happy as a clam. She shook her head as she watched him go and straightened back up. Wirt and Beatrice were taking up the far rear still, their position marked by the dash of her hair against the greenery. It looked like they were talking, but it was hard to tell.

"Aw," Mabel said as she came up next to Sara's shoulder. "They're so cute."

Sara pretended not to hear as Dipper admonished his sister. "Mabel, _shh."_

"What?" There was the sound of someone making a gesture. _"…Ohhh."_ She chewed on her lip and then corrected herself: "You know, actually, it's kind of excessive." She laid an elbow on Sara's shoulder, shaking her head judgmentally. "Yeah, nope. Those two need to leave some room for Jesus between them, for sure." Sara heard Dipper put his face in his hand, and decided she couldn't ignore the issue anymore.

"I'm alright, you guys," she said, shrugging Mabel's arm off. "Don't worry about me. Seriously." She looked back at Wirt and Beatrice again. Their shapes were almost indistinguishable from one another at this distance. "Wirt and I are friends. That's all." There _was_ a little twinge in thinking about being the person under the cloak with him, but it didn't mean anything. The twins glanced at each other doubtfully and she struggled with how to break the awkwardness until Greg spared her having to try.

"Hey Maple!" he cried from a few yards up the path. "How good are you at balancing?"

"I'm fantastic!" she yelled over Sara's head.

"Let's balance together!" Greg cried, and Sara looked up to see him wobbling on one foot, saucepan sliding from side to side on his head. She thought for a second that he was standing on a rock, until her vision materialized a small ledge there, which didn't make sense. She stepped forward, and her shoe hit something hard. She looked down. There was a train track under her feet, earthy with rust and hidden by mosses and grass, but unmistakable nonetheless.

In the course of a second, she felt thrilled, and then consciously confused to as to why she was so amazed by something as mundane as a train track, and then realization caught up to her fully and she jumped away from it like a livewire.

Dipper had noticed the same thing she had. "Oh, no way." He kicked the rail to test its realness. "Holy crap…" He looked up. It was hard to tell past the debris of the forest, but a keen eye saw the permanent way extending far into the grass, straight as an arrow.

"Ohmygosh." Mabel put a breathless hand on Sara's elbow to steady herself. "Where do you think it goes?"

Sara's mouth was very dry. "Only one way to find out." She hesitated, and then began sprinting back toward Wirt and Beatrice, lighter on her feet than she had been in days.

When Beatrice heard the news, her eyes went wide. "Tracks?" she demanded, clutching at Sara's arm in what she chose to interpret as a familiar gesture, rather than a threatening one. "Train tracks. Are you serious?"

"Yes, I'm serious!"

"That feathery sonofabitch," she muttered under her breath, and bid them urgently to hurry forward before they could ask what she meant by that.

When they caught back up, Mabel and Greg were still playing a game of balancing on the tracks, while Dipper was down on his knees, examining the rail while he stroked his tiny beard. "These haven't been used in a long time," he reported with weak authority, "but they were at _some_ point. You can see the wear on the steel." He stood up and scratched his head. "This is the only sign of civilization I've seen since Halloween, aside from those shacks. I don't know what…" He trailed off.

"We have to follow them," Beatrice insisted.

"Of course we do," Sara agreed.

Mabel enthused, "This is the best thing that's happened in days!"

"There's a man down there," Greg pointed out.

Wirt had a nervous hand at the base of his throat: "No one else feels like this could be a trap?"

"We don't have many other options." Dipper seemed to share his reservations. "It's either this or heading off into the wilderness aga–" And then he stopped. "Wait. Greg, what did you just say?"

Greg repeated himself with great patience. "There's a man down there." He pointed a helpful finger, and the stricken teenagers followed its trajectory. A far-off smudge between the trees did, indeed, look an awful lot like a man seated by the right-hand side of the tracks. Sara's heart leapt, and she resisted the impulse to sprint forward. Dipper seemed to have the same thought, as he gestured absently at the others to keep a steady pace.

"I can't believe it," Wirt murmured close by Sara's shoulder. "Are we the only ones here, or…?" Automatically, she reached out to give his hand a reassuring squeeze, and then let go again when she realized what she was doing. She tried not to look guilty in front of Beatrice; it didn't seem like she'd seen, but she was a hard one to read at the best of times.

With each step, it manifested that there was, indeed, a man sitting by the tracks, just as it had appeared at a distance. Except it wasn't one man – it was two, seated back-to-back, both of them wearing very strange hats. Except they weren't hats. The sight was a hard one to make sense of until they had come within fifty feet of the duo, when it finally resolved in Sara's brain like a dropped rock. She swallowed, hard, and told herself she oughtn't to be so surprised. Wirt had always told her the Unknown was full of such extraordinarily weird things as this.

They looked like old men, dressed in worn tweed and leather shoes, bolo ties and high-waisted trousers, sitting on a wrought-iron bench with two opposing seats and the same back. The bench was draped thickly in wild red-leafed vines that had bound both men from feet to necks, a situation which seemed to bore them immensely. The one facing the tracks was reading a newspaper, which had been washed out by rain and was starting to fail at the creases. The one facing away from the tracks held an umbrella, speckled with holes.

Both men had the heads of goats, and looked thoroughly nonplussed by that.

Neither paid any attention to the group of teenagers inching up the tracks toward them. Irrationally, their pace as a group slowed down as they drew closer; even Mabel looked nervous. Greg was unimpressed by their fear. He pulled up ahead of the others, glanced back to see if they were going to get it together in a timely manner, and finally pulled his mouth to the side and marched up to the old man with the newspaper.

"Sir?" he asked politely. The man sniffed and twitched his speckled nose, but did not respond. His longways eyes skipped across the unreadable paper in his hands. "Sir? Hello, we're a bunch of lost children, far from home. Do you know the way to where everybody is?" Still nothing. Greg crawled up onto the bench and waved a hand in his face. "Are you alright, sir? Sir?"

The man started violently, as if he'd been woken from a nap. Greg leapt away from him to the other end of the bench. "Ho, what? Who's there?" He stared around blindly for a second before honing in on Greg. His eyes narrowed. "What's going on here, now? Can't an old man wait to die without being accosted by wild, roving mad youths?"

Greg looked surprised, and the second man, facing away from the tracks with his useless umbrella, drawled, "Don't you mind that old ungulate, child. He's had a bug up his tail-end for longer than I've been alive. And we're twins!" By now, the rest of the group had come to a standstill by the bench, puffing and stretching sore muscles. Beatrice leaned heavily on Dipper, simultaneously flushed and pale. The man with the umbrella peered over his shoulder and shot them a cheeky, goaty grin. "Well, would you believe, it's an entire troupe of urchins come to torment us, John! What fun!"

"Hmmph," snorted the one with the newspaper, and buried his nose within it.

"Come on, children!" continued the umbrella-goat, gesturing them closer with a jerk of the head. His hand not holding the umbrella was bound to the bench's armrest by woody vines. "Nice day for a chit-chat here at the end of the world, don't you think?"

"No talking," snipped the other. "I'm listening for the train."

"You'll wear out your ears, fool. There's no train coming anymore."

"The train comes for everyone, nitwit."

"Well, that remains to be seen," said the umbrella-goat smugly.

"…I'm sorry," Dipper said with a shake of his head, clearly wanting to start over from the beginning. "Who are you two exactly?"

The one with the newspaper grunted, "John Owl," while the one with the umbrella trilled, "Jim Rat!"

Greg stood up and leaned over the back of the bench to take a closer look at the cheerier of the two. "You don't _look_ like a rat."

"Looks mean as little as names do," grumbled the one called Owl.

"Anyone as unwise as you are would sure know that well," ribbed the Rat.

Beatrice said, to no one in particular, "This is really weird," and Sara was silently grateful that she wasn't the only one out of her depth here.

"Are you guys from –" Wirt's voice cracked and he had to take a second. "Are you from… the Unknown? You – you kind of seem like you're from the Unknown."

John Owl hunched his shoulders and said, "Feh."

"Why, that question's an unknown in and of itself, innit?" chortled Jim Rat. "Unknowns within unknowns! Hell of a Matryoskhka doll to play with!"

Greg mused on their words and concluded, "That's not very helpful."

"What does it matter where one's from?" John Owl shot over his newspaper. "Matters where one is. And not even that, anymore."

"It kind of matters to us," Wirt said.

Mabel tried to take charge of the situation. "See, gentlemen, here's the thing," she said sweetly. She seemed to consider sitting on the bench, as a familiar gesture, but the creeping vines dissuaded her. "Like our little buddy in the metal hat here was saying – he's Greg, by the way, I'm Mabel – we're kiiind of lost. There was this whole _thing_ that happened a few nights ago and, I mean, we don't know why we're caught up in the middle of it, but –"

"Of course you know why you're in the middle of it," snorted the goat with the newspaper. His long ears flattened in disgust. "Don't act stupid."

"Hey, old man." Dipper bristled immediately. "Don't call my sister stupid."

That got the first inkling of true interest from John Owl. He tilted his head at Dipper and peered over a pair of tiny spectacles balanced on his nose. "Ahh. This one's got a protective streak, eh, Jim?"

Dipper crossed his arms. "Yeah, you goat, I'm a twin, too. You're damn right I do."

"Hey." Sara stepped forward, palms out. If she did things right she'd come across as the one among them trying to keep the peace, but really, she wanted everyone to shut up so she could think. "I don't think Dipper meant any disrespect, Mr. Owl," she said, ingratiatingly deferent. The old man shot her a suspicious look. "We're just looking for a way home."

"Not likely to find that here," Jim Rat said lightly.

Sara ignored him. "Did you say you know why we're all here?"

John Owl spat, "Why should I?"

"You said –"

"You expected _us_ to know," Beatrice spat back.

"Well, you bloody well ought to!" John Owl closed his newspaper with what would have been a snap, if it hadn't been so soggy. His rectangular yellow eyes narrowed in distaste. "Bunch of mannerless children, I say. Come stumbling through here with evil at their heels, like they forgot to wipe their feet – and then possessing the nerve to say they had no idea they were even making a mess! Well, I'm not cleaning up messes for anyone again, no sir. I've put in my time. I'm just an old goat waiting to die. Have the decency to leave me in peace." And the newspaper opened again.

"Hey now, John," Jim said plaintively, craning his neck at his brother. "That's awfully uncharitable of you."

"Charity is for women and soft-hearted fools!" John raged.

Dipper and Beatrice were visibly peeved, Mabel was rocking back on forth on her heels in the manner of a woman rebuffed, and Wirt looked jumpy in his own skin, like he just wanted to leave. Sara surveyed the others for inspiration as to what to do, and found none, so she made a calculated decision and slipped forward, sidling around to the far side of the bench. She seated herself a couple feet from Jim Rat, tucked her ankles together, and placed her hands on her lap, like she'd been made to do in church. The goat smiled at her. He had crows' feet at the fuzzy pink edges of his eyes, and smelled of licorice.

"Well, greetings, lass! Good of you to join me. My evil twin hasn't scared you off, then?"

"Not yet," she laughed. Back when she was ten, when she and her sister were living with their grandparents during the divorce, Sara had frequently found herself hovering during her grandfather's weekly poker games. She'd always enjoyed talking to his friends, and they'd seemed to enjoy her presence at the table as well; old men, in her experience, generally just crave someone they can approve of in a world that is otherwise moving very fast and far from what they're used to. She wasn't happy, but put on her sweetest smile nonetheless and placed a gentle hand on the man's arm, under the elbow holding up the umbrella. "Hey, you're not uncomfortable being all tied up there, are you?"

"Not at all," Jim said cheerily. "This seat was made for me!"

"Well, that's good, at least." She sat back with a kind look. "I'd like to ask you a question, if that's okay."

"Well, fire away, young lady!" If there was one thing old men enjoyed more than doting on children, it was answering questions.

"You and your brother are the first people we've seen in days," Sara said. She worked hard to keep her expression engaged and highly invested. "We thought we were the only ones, and we didn't know why. So… can I ask why _you're_ here?"

Despite wanting to be left alone, John Owl seemed loath to disengage himself from the conversation. "Well, we can hardly walk anywhere else," he shot over the back of the bench.

"Aaah, go milk yourself," Jim shot back, tossing his head with a snort. "She was asking _me,_ you ninny." His voice was harsh, but he gave Sara a hearty wink. "Well, you can imagine we're here for the same reason you are, miss."

Greg had stood up on John Owl's side of the bench and leaned over, putting his face next to Sara's and watching the other goat with equal interest. Mabel, too, sidled over, not wanting to be left out of their little collusion. "Why is that, though?" Sara asked, more insistently. "I don't really understand it."

The goat gave her a sympathetic look. "All of us here were marked for this place before it existed, child. That ought to have been obvious."

It most certainly was not. Sara bit her tongue and tried to crank up the naïveté. "I don't really understand what this place _is_."

"A bad dream," interrupted John Owl. She turned to look at the back of his head. "The marquise in a Venn diagram. This awful rag of a world got dumped in the bucket of another, and mixed up and wrung out again, and now only the worst stains've stayed in the weave. That's us, you know." His sneer was yellow in the tooth; "This place is only fit for the poor souls who'd already belonged to the darkness." He sat back slowly, expression grim, and his gaze flickered to Greg, on the bench next to him. "Some of us more than others, I see." His curling horns were spiraled with lianas. From very far away, thunder rolled across the sky.

Greg was as straightforward and unaffected by foreboding as ever. "You mean the Edelwood, right, Mister Owl?"

"Darkness takes many forms," John Owl said, and cast a shadowy look at Dipper. "The Edelwood is certainly one of them."

Sara's stomach roiled. Talk of stains and darkness bit at her brain, hitting anxieties she didn't know she'd even possessed. The vines lining her seat were lumpy and uneven to begin with, and with trepidation she wondered if it didn't feel like they were trying to grow along her legs a little.

The silence was broken after a moment by thin laughter: _"Hehehe,"_ Jim Rat sniggered, umbrella jiggling in his hand. "Ah, John. You've always had a flair for the worst life has to offer." Six ashen faces turned to the second goat, while John Owl muttered an oath under his breath and reopened his paper. "It's not as bad as that, tykes! All's not lost as long as you're still up and about, eh?" He directed a knowing nod at the creepers that bound him to the bench. "Keep out of the way of those damnable wolves and you ought to do well enough for yourselves."

Nobody responded to him until Greg said, "The wolves are gone, Mister Rat."

"Are they _really,_ now?" said Jim Rat, sounding deeply impressed. "Well, that explains why the trees haven't finished us off, now, doesn't it, John!" The other goat grunted.

"Are you all wrapped up 'cos the wolves got you?" Greg asked.

"Sure are, lad," the goat answered, surprisingly upbeat. "They play a game, as I'm sure you know, and old men like us, well, we're not so good at games like that anymore. They caught us, and they ate us, yes, and then they left us for the Edelwood, see, and we were just waiting for the old train to come pick us up when the world went all sort of off-kilter a few nights back, you remember, don't you, John?" John grunted again. "If the wolves have left, though, I imagine the trees might not be so sure what to do with themselves anymore," Jim continued mournfully, ears atwitch. "They're a bit like lost children, you know, not unlike yourselves. Not so good at self-direction." He shook his head. "Who really knows how long it'll be now, to sort out this whole mess so we can finish growing."

"The Edelwood almost got me, too, a long time ago," Greg said sadly. "I wish Wirt could cut you out like he got me."

Thunder rumbled again, and Sara fought an ill feeling in her throat. A creeping idea was worming its way into her head, discomforting and cold. The others looked no better than she felt, except for Greg, of course, who just patted Jim's shoulder understandingly. Beatrice's eyes were all over the place, agitated, like she feared an ambush. "Look, are there any more people around anywhere?" she asked of the men. "A town? Anything?"

John Owl grumbled, "Who cares," but Jim Rat answered her, "A town, perhaps, or so I've heard. A little bird told me." He offered her a hearty wink, and she blanched. "But you can't always believe what birds say, can you?"

"Is it Gravity Falls?" Dipper interjected, with an edge to his voice. "Is the town…? Is it Gravity Falls that you're talking about?"

"Can't say I know, champ."

Sara added another question of her own to the mix: "Will these train tracks lead us there?" The old goat shrugged blithely.

"Seems as good an idea as any," he said. "Though to tell you true, I imagine that any road you took would get you there eventually. The path down a vortex always leads to the same place." Dipper and Mabel shared a look. Another peal of thunder, louder than the others, sounded. Sara wrapped herself up in her jacket.

"Come on," someone said softly, and touched her on the shoulder. Wirt. "W-we should go, try to find shelter before… before the –"

"Yeah," she agreed before he was done speaking, but she didn't move from the bench. Ideas washed around her head like icecubes. "…Wirt?" He looked down again. She took his hand like before, and squeezed it, and this time she didn't care if Beatrice saw. "Did the Edelwood almost get you, too? Back then?"

She wasn't looking at him, so she almost wasn't sure if he'd even heard her until he finally said, "…Yeah." Her stomach turned instantly cold. "Not as bad. But yeah." She felt the need to stand, to walk, to get away. She took an absent step forward and watched to see if the others were going to do the same. Beatrice was still staring at the goat men, expression angry but perplexed, and the twins were doing that thing again where they held complex conversations entirely through miniscule head and hand gestures.

"It was good to talk with you, little lady!" John Rat said cheerily as she ambled away. She was ashamed of herself for being barely able to manage a mumbled acknowledgement.

Edelwood boys, demonic possession, worlds halfway made. As John said: this was a place for people who had known darkness before and left an anchoring piece of themselves in the shadows, but Sara had never done such a thing. Her existence here was, by all appearances, accidental, a lone girl who had fallen into procession with giants. If she tried hard enough, she could almost convince herself that her lack of burden was a blessing, but to be honest, purpose looked like the much more valuable endowment from where she stood. Only Greg saw her upset, and stood to give regretful goodbyes to both men, one of whom received his much more graciously than the other.

"I hope you get out of these trees," Greg wished them.

Jim Rat said, "Not much chance of that, but I appreciate the sentiment, little one."

"Pah," snorted John Owl. "Don't burden us with your wants. Begone, little beast." Sara wondered if the rest of them owed the men goodbyes of their own. In the end, she decided she was just too tired.

Hesitantly, they started wandering off again, one by one, with guilty glances thrown back at two old men with trees in their hearts. Thunder rumbled, feet dragged, and despite having a clear path for the first time, Sara felt as lost as she ever had before.

* * *

 **This chapter ought not have taken as long as it did, but [insert weak excuse here].**

 **Here's my last update before Gravity Falls' finale. Fandom interest tends to die down pretty quickly after a show ties itself up, and I have certainly not been as speedy with these updates as I could have been, but I hope those of you who have made it this far will stick around to the end! I still have unadvisedly ambitious plans for this fic and hope I can offer an intriguing alternative to the canon ending, no matter what it may end up looking like.**

 _It may only be fanfic, but hours and hours of work per week go into each chapter of this story in order to provide the highest quality reading experience I am capable of. Comments are the only payment I'll ever receive for it. If you've enjoyed it up to this point, your feedback and ability to recommend the fic to others are invaluable to me; even taking a minute to leave a smiley face in the comments is enough. Any amount connection to my readers makes the time and effort worth it. I love to hear from you guys!_


	9. The Mother of Tree Roots

Greg smiled when he heard the forest breathe, and had the feeling in his chest and tummy like things were getting better than he'd been starting to think lately.

The sun was going lower down behind the clouds, and the creamsicle-color sky coughed up thunder, and the shadows were getting bigger under the trees, like how water goes through paper. Birds sang about eggs and bugs and the smell of lightning, deer in their deer-homes laid down under the weight of the bones on their heads, and the trees stretched themselves up and down, turning their feet and arms in the warm dirt and the wet air. The forest was so loud and busy and full of little parts jigsaw-puzzling to make big wholes; he'd never really noticed it all before, which seemed pretty crazy now. Maybe he'd just been too little, the last time he was in the woods.

The trees felt like they were leaning toward him, not in a scary way, but like they were excited to see him coming; he raised his arms up to let them know that he was excited to see them, too. Yesterday he'd been scared when that first old elm had offered to save his big brother, if that was what he wanted, but he was starting to get used to the sounds of trees' voices now. He liked them. If he listened carefully, it was like there was a big low noise underground, like something huge and old was sleeping there. He took a breath of the words, and felt good about himself.

Jason Funderburker pushed his head out of Greg's sweater to ask, _"Rorrp?"_ and Greg patted him as comfortingly as he could. "Don't worry, chum," he said. "We have the train tracks now!" The weedy rails under his sneakers weren't much to look at, but they scooped a clear path straight forward, made the ground flat, and even better than anything else, they for-sure led to an actual somewhere. The goats said so. Greg thought that was pretty darn exciting, but it seemed like the big kids didn't. They were all acting that way Dad always called Wirt, _morose._ They walked in faraway clumps behind him, heavy in the foot, staring at the mushy ground as if the sky above them weren't rolling around full of storm and overall just being much more interesting than dirt. He looked back for a minute, and then ran to be closer to his brother. He tucked himself in next to Wirt's knee and, to make sure he knew he was there, wrapped his arms around his brother's thigh to reassure him. It made Wirt walk wonky, but he didn't tell him to stop. He put a hand on Greg's pot-hat and left it there, and Greg guessed it made them both feel better.

"Hey, Wirt?" he asked. Wirt mumbled. "When we get to the gravity waterfalls, will the people who run a pizza place be there, do you think? 'Cause I'm really hungry. I don't have any money, though. Will you buy me a slice of pizza when we get there?"

"I don't think there's going to be any pizza there, Greg," Wirt said. His voice was full of little cracks, like tree bark. Greg craned his head up; his brother was looking straight forward, with big gray circles under his eyes. A red leaf stuck out the top of Greg's vision, and when he pulled back he saw it was poking from the end of Wirt's sleeve. He knew his brother would be fussy if he saw it there, so he took him by the hand and plucked the leaf out. When he did, Wirt jerked his arm away.

"Ow! What are you –" He rubbed at his hand. Greg held the leaf up and Wirt frowned at it, but then he rolled up his sleeve and his expression fell straight down. A teeny drop of blood was beading up on the inside of his wrist, where Greg had pulled out the leaf. Wirt stumbled on the train tracks, and then stopped walking.

Greg clutched at his elbow: "Did I hurt you? I'm sorry, Wirt." The blood welled high and then ran down the round of his arm.

"N-no, Greg, no, I… I just…" Wirt's mouth was hanging open and Greg could tell he had his Thinking Cap on. He blinked really fast and looked around like to check if anyone was watching them, then he swallowed and put his hands on Greg's shoulders and started to push him forward like a grocery cart. "Just keep walking," he murmured, not to Greg. "Everything's going to be okay. Keep walking." They passed close by a fern crawling up a tree trunk, and it unrolled its curlicues to brush Greg as he went. He laughed when they tickled his cheeks, but Wirt made a noise like he'd been pinched.

 _"Shit!"_ He yanked Greg away from the tree so quickly that the little boy's hat fell down over his eyes. Wirt never said bad words in front of him like that. "No, this can't be happening, no no no…"

When Greg lifted the pan again his brother had dropped down to his knees next to him, white in the face. "Here, Greg, here, come on," he said, with his words too fast for his tongue and his hands shaking. "I'll – I'll c-carry you. How's that sound? Come on." That was really hard to believe; Wirt had been complaining that Greg was too heavy to carry since he was seven. But he stayed there, gesturing over his shoulder, and Greg realized he actually meant it. He wrapped his arms around his big brother's neck and Wirt lifted him up piggyback-style. The air seemed thinner up where Wirt's head was, and Greg marveled at their speed when he started walking again. It was a thrill. He kicked his throbbing feet happily, but when he craned his head around to look at Wirt he saw his brother was still frowning. His forehead was either sweaty or just wet, but either way he didn't look so good.

"Wirt?" Greg wrapped his arms tight around his neck to show he cared. "Are you okay?"

"Don't worry about me," Wirt said. His shoulders quaked. "I'm worrying about _you_ right now, okay?"

He didn't want Wirt to have to worry at all, but truth to tell, he really liked being carried. Jason Funderburker pushed his froggy head up next to his, and the two of them watched the trees grow and the sky squirm around behind their branches, turning from orange to red. The color burned his eyes, and blinking started getting harder and harder to come back from.

 _"Aww… you two are so cute."_

The words peeped into Greg's sleepy head after a while, but didn't make him open his eyes. He rubbed his nose on the back of Wirt's neck and rolled his head away from the noise.

"Thanks," Wirt's voice said. There was a grumble of thunder; it was getting louder every time. He hitched Greg up a little higher and puffed. "It's, uh… You don't wanna take a turn, I suppose?"

"I don't think I could." Mabel was the one talking to Wirt, he could hear. It seemed like it would be nice to say hi, but sleep seemed even nicer. "He's kinda big for his age, isn't he?"

"You don't have to tell me." Wirt bounced him up again, and Greg sniffed and wiggled back down into the warm spot he'd made. "If he winds up taller than me I have no idea what I'm going to do."

"Dipper used to be sooo insecure about being the shorter one of us," she said, and Greg felt the breeze from her flapping her arms around. "Until we turned fifteen, I mean. Now… Well, I still have like those three years to lord over him, at least. Small victories, right?"

"Small victories, yeah," Wirt murmured. Jason Funderburker writhed around in Greg's sweater, and he frowned and sleepily patted him back down. Four feet made patters on the crunchy ground for a while until Wirt spoke again: "So, you know, Mabel, I was thinking we… we should maybe talk?" He was squeaky.

Greg felt it when she grabbed Wirt's arm. "Oh my gosh, yes!" She squeezed his arm under hers, put her elbow in Greg's shin. "Yes yes yes! I'm so glad you asked! Because I noticed we haven't really talked that much one-on-one, I don't think, you know?, and I mean, things have been stressful, obviously, but I don't want that to make us miss out on each other's _friendship_." She jumped up and down and jerked the side of his body with her. "Talking would be _fantastic!_ Okay, I'll go first. My name's Mabel, of course, aaand my hobbies are knitting and confectioning and free climbing and my favorite animals are pigs! I had braces until I was fourteen, and I'm captain of the ladies' rugby team, and I was born first and that technically makes me the older sibling. I'll think of some other stuff later. Now you!"

The back of Wirt's neck went hot. "I-I didn't – I mean, I, uh, I'm a music major, but –"

"Ohmygosh, I _love_ music! What kind?"

"Well, woodwind performance with, um, maybe some interest in composition, but that's not what I –"

"I don't know what I want to major in yet," she said, and started swinging his arm back and forth with hers. "I mean, I've still got time to figure it out, obviously, but it's a big decision! Part of me wants culinary school, or fashion design, or hospitality, or industrial machining?"

"That's – quite a variety –"

"Yeah, I know. I can't decide. Sometimes it all makes me think that making teenagers invest a huge amount of time and money in a decision that essentially defines how they'll spend the rest of their lives isn't that great a system?"

"Yeah, it's – but, no, hey," he said, and he cleared his throat. She kept bouncing his arm. "Actually, I meant that – I think we need to talk about what happened to you and a-and Dipper? In Gravity Falls?"

The bouncing instantly stopped. Thunder filled its sound-place. Wirt walked two more steps and then halted and turned. For the first time, real curiosity cut into Greg's sleepiness, and he wanted to open his eyes, but decided to stay still.

"Mabel?" Wirt's voice.

"Why do you need to know that?" she asked, and Greg had never heard her sound this way before. All the funny was gone. Wirt seemed surprised, too. He faltered out loud, and then stopped and tried again.

"Because – b-because, I mean, I keep hearing a lot of little bits and pieces that sound really… really weird? But never the whole story. A-and I feel sort of like it might end up being important."

"Yeah, well, it won't, 'cause it's a long weird complicated thing from a long time ago that doesn't have anything to do with what's happening now," she said, and her tone was short and sharp.

Wirt was starting to match her. "Yeah, well, I guess I-I'm not so sure about that, you know? Because I keep hearing about, I don't know, demon possession here, a-and interdimensional portals there, and I mean, you heard the goats, I know you did, they said we were all here for a reason and they talked about _darkness_ and they were looking a-at your brother when they did, I saw it, Mabel, we all did, and I just…"

"You," she said, chilly, "had better not be implying what I think you're implying."

"I don't know what I'm implying!" Wirt started to raise his voice, but dropped it straight down to a big whisper again in the middle of the sentence. "Because I don't know anything at all. You heard our story, but you never told yours. And I… I need to know, Mabel, I-I'm sorry, you and Dipper seem like good people, you do, but – I have bigger priorities." Greg felt his brother's arms tighten around his legs. "I won't put Greg in danger for anything. Not ever again."

"But we would _never,"_ she hissed shakily, and her voice got closer. "Me and Dipper would never do _anything_ to hurt Greg or you or anyone else! How could you –?"

"Then –" But Wirt cut himself off as Dipper called from far behind, _"Mabel! Is everything okay?"_

She shuffled and breathed out her nose and took a second, and then yelled back, "Everything's fine!" She sounded perfectly happy. Wirt turned and started walking again and Greg strained his ears to hear if Mabel was still with them. Everything was quiet for a few minutes. It was so hard to stay still. He kept smelling something in the air, in little nose-bites, but he couldn't get quite a sense of it. The trees sure weren't saying. Then Mabel murmured, "You're not the only one whose brother is their priority, you know," and her voice had a break in it, like it wore her heart down to have to talk mean.

Greg's ear was pressed against Wirt's shoulder. He heard him swallow. "I know." His voice scratched. "I want – I want to trust you. Please. Please just tell me what happened so that I can let myself."

Quiet again for a long time. Mabel finally said, "Don't ask Dipper anything about this, okay?" She sounded very sad. "I'll tell you if you promise you just won't ask him."

"I – okay, I won't. But why?"

"'Cause it's not fair," she said. Greg thought her throat sounded kind of dry. "He shouldn't have to talk about it. Never again."

"Okay. I promise." He pulled one of his arms very carefully away from Greg's leg, and it felt like they shook hands. "Now tell me. Please. What happened in Gravity Falls?"

Again, Mabel took a minute. Greg sniffed again for that funny smell in the air. "We were twelve," she finally said, so quiet it was hard to hear, "and we were staying with our Grunkle Stan for the summer. You remember the stuff about the portal from last night?" Wirt nodded. "Our other Grunkle is the one who built it. We met –"

"Sorry, what on earth is a grunkle?"

"Our great uncle. See, you mash the words together and it's like a cute little portmon-thing…? Anyway. Dipper met someone who really, really wanted the portal back up and running. He was a demon from another dimension, and his world was falling apart and stuff, and I guess he figured if he could open up a hole between his world and ours he could come through and take over this one."

"…Wow."

"Yeah," Mabel said, dragging her feet. "It's kinda crazy-sounding."

"No, I mean – well, it is, but I realized that I completely believe all of it. I think that's the crazy part."

"You get used to it after a while." There was a jolt from her nudging him and they kept walking.

It took a while for Wirt to prompt, "So, um… what happened?"

"Oh. Yeah." She puffed. "I wasn't… I wasn't really there for the beginning, honestly. Dipper can be really solitary and, like, I was maybe off messing around and chasing boys more than I should have been sometimes, but…" A moment. "He told me, sort of. What led up to it. He doesn't like talking about it, and, like, I don't blame him. But he… he let Bill into his head, I guess. The demon, I mean. Dipper… He thought I was in danger, is the thing. He thought he was doing what he needed to save me." Her feet shuffled, crunched on the ground. "But Bill tricked him. He _p-possessed_ him and used his body to open up the portal and –" Her breathing was getting louder and faster. Wirt stopped walking again and, unable to contain his curiosity any longer, Greg peeped open an eye, but he was facing the wrong way. The shadows had changed since he closed his eyes, and were colored dark dark orange. Lightning lit up the trees like a camera-flash and then the thunder fell out of the sky after it.

"The world went crazy," Mabel whispered. "There were monsters and demons everywhere and a lot of people almost _died._ And Dipper got hurt." Greg rolled his eyes around to see if he could see her. No dice. "He got hurt pretty bad. And our… one of our Grunkles, he figured out how to send Bill back to his dimension and he closed up the portal and saved everyone b-but in the end he… he didn't…" She had water in her throat. _He didn't what?_ Greg wondered, but Wirt didn't ask Mabel to tell him what. He let go of Greg's leg again to do something with his hand. It felt like he was patting her.

"A-and it all got fixed in the end," Mabel sputtered, "and we lived, and everyone else was fine, b-but –"

Wirt said softly, "It's okay. It get it." She sniffed. "I'm… I'm really sorry."

"It's okay, I'm okay… Crap, let's keep walking. I don't want Dipper to see…"

Keep walking they did. Greg was starting to squirm; he couldn't help it. "But everything… everything's okay, now?" Wirt asked.

"Downright peachy," Mabel said, and her voice was cheerful but she kind of still sounded like she meant the opposite of what she was saying, which was confusing. "Bill's dead and we got to go back to our normal, everyday lives in Piedmont where there aren't any sexy werewolves at all and ghosts hardly ever try to kill you. What could be better, right?"

The scent of a fireplace was warming up Greg's nose and _that,_ he finally realized, what was he'd been smelling this whole time. It was like Christmas Eve in the air, and he sighed contentedly. "Wirt," he murmured. Wirt craned over his shoulder to look at him.

"Oh, hey, Greg. You're awake."

"'Member when we went camping?"

"Um. Probably. We've been camping lots of times."

Mabel ruffled Greg's head and said, "I don't think I ever wanna go camping again after all this mess, yeah?"

"Haha. Yeah," Greg goofed sleepily, poking his head over his brother's shoulder. Mabel had sounded a minute ago like she was crying, but she looked okay now. Or maybe it was just getting too dark to see. "But Wirt, I mean the time we went camping when it was really really good. We swam in the river and there were all those snails on the rocks and raccoons stole our swim pants and Dad made basghetti on the campfire. Remember?"

"I don't think I remember that one."

"But there were snails!" He pulled his weight up more on Wirt's shoulders. "Now campfires always kind of smell like basghetti, I think. And now I want basghetti."

"I'll see what I can do, Greg," Wirt said tiredly, but Mabel grabbed his arm and made them both stop.

"Hold on," she said, and turned around. "Greg is right, though. It smells like –"

And that was the same moment Sara called from way behind, "Do you all smell that?!"

"Fire," Wirt murmured.

"Fire!" Mabel cried.

"Greg, here –" Wirt stooped to shoulder him down. Greg was sad to go back to walking, but it was okay. He was awake enough now. He dropped down to the ground and started running back toward the others with Wirt and Mabel.

Dipper and Sara and Beatrice were all standing together in a little chain. Beatrice slumped between them, staring at the ground and not talking much. "It can't be a wildfire," Sara was saying when they got to them. "There's got to be someone nearby." Greg felt thrilled. Why hadn't he thought of that!

Dipper said, "Does anyone have any idea where it's coming from?"

"How do you find a smell?" Mabel asked. The smokiness was strong and everywhere. It was a good question that Greg suddenly came up with a brilliant answer to.

"Beatrice!" he cried, and grabbed her arm away from where she'd been using it to lean on Sara. "Ask the birds!"

Everybody, Beatrice too, asked him: "What?"

"Ask the birds where the fire is!" He pulled on her arm to remind her not to pretend she couldn't do it. "They can see everything!"

The funny thing was, Beatrice actually looked for a second like she didn't know what he was talking about. She had big bags under her eyes and seemed like she was having a hard time focusing on him. He had the wild and crazy idea that he'd somehow dreamed up the crow that talked to her. Then her shoulders slumped when she understood, and she put a hand on the bridge of her nose. "Oh, jeez. Greg…"

Wirt was stern. "Greg, don't tease."

But Greg would never tease. Wirt should know that. "You said tonight, Beatrice! And it's almost night-time! You promised!" She took a deep shaky breath, still pinching her nose. "Please, Beatrice! _Please?"_

Beatrice looked at the others again and a painful look covered her tiredness. "What is he talking about?" Wirt asked.

"You know what, let's just maybe just run a little recon in the trees around here to see if we can find the fire close by," Sara said, reaching for Beatrice's arm again, but she was waved away.

Beatrice murmured, "No, he's right, I promised," but she didn't sound like she wanted to keep the promise at all. She limped slowly forward to lean against a tree and took a deep breath. _"Hey!"_ she yelled toward the trees as loud as she could, which wasn't really that loud. _"Who knows where that smoke is coming from?"_

There was no sound except the sound of water. Beatrice turned pink and Greg took her hand to say thank you for trying. "Hey," Mabel asked, "are you feeling okay? You look kinda pale."

"Let's maybe just find someplace around here to sleep tonight, it's been a long day," Wirt agreed.

"You've gotta be kidding me," Beatrice muttered, and again she shouted, raggedy, _"Come on, you stupid birds! You're making me look crazy down here! Where's the fire?"_

The woods trickled and the sky boomed. And then, finally, from a tree not so far away, the sound of an owl: " _Whoo, whooo-oo."_ Everyone perked their ears, and Beatrice dropped her hands like they were too heavy.

"It says it's coming from the west. Further down the tracks." She flipped a hand that way to make sure everyone got it. "Not far." Her eyes dared them to think she was lying. The other big kids all looked at each other, and said okay, and Wirt and Sara helped her start walking again. Greg felt like that had gone really well, or he did until he heard Wirt whisper to Beatrice, _"You know, you don't have to play along with him if you don't want to."_

Greg wanted to argue with his brother, but was distracted when the screaming noises started coming out of the woods again, just in time for the sun to go down. He was annoyed at Wirt, but walked close by his side anyway. The noises were different tonight than they had been before, though. They didn't screech and scream and whistle anymore; they just moaned, like they were hungry, or sad. Greg kept a sneaky ear out for the trees, but they weren't saying much. Sometimes he thought he could see something out there, black shapes like deer, maybe, but just like always, nothing ever came out toward them. The voices just complained in the dark.

"Look," Dipper said finally, and started jogging forward. It was almost dark for real now, but Greg could still see the wheezy shape of smoke billowing through the trees and a hot glow that was starting to touch the ground ahead. They came around a clump of bushes and, standing there next to the train tracks, was what looked like a cottage, or at least part of one. Its whole front half was missing, cut straight off like a pat of butter, or a dollhouse. It had a dark attic, but no stairs to get to it. The ground floor had a great big fire in a great big fireplace against the back wall, and half a kitchen to the left and half a bed to the right, both running right up against the edge of the house and ending with it. Even the rug in the middle of the floor was only half there. The wall next to the fireplace was burst in with woody roots that tangled with bricks and clumps of dirt, like a chunk of seaweed falling out of the wall, and it was hard to see, but if Greg squinted it looked like a tree had grown up around the whole back of the building, hugging it with its branches and vines.

"Wow," said Sara. "It actually was up here."

"I told you," Beatrice muttered, and then everyone started up shouting, because she slipped off of Wirt's shoulder and fell right down to the leafy ground.

She stood up with a lot of help. It was only a few steps to get into the house, but as soon as they did she fell again. Greg stood back as the big kids scrambled around. "I need to look at her leg," Dipper said. "Crap, um – Mabel, can you help her…?"

Greg sat down on the floor next to the half-bed and pulled open the collar of his sweater so Jason Funderburker could come out. The frog looked at the turned backs of the big kids and ribbeted worriedly at Greg. "I dunno," he answered. "I guess it's our turn to just wait and see." He didn't really understand what was happening. Beatrice had seemed okay not so long ago. Dipper and Wirt came to stand next to him for a minute, facing the wall of the house that didn't exist. Wirt had his face in his hand. "What's going on?" Greg asked. Wirt didn't take his face out, but Dipper smiled at him, sort of, kind of.

"Dunno yet, buddy," he said. He sounded so tired.

"Okay, she's ready," Sara said from next to the fire, and both older boys walked straight back. This time, Greg followed them.

Beatrice was laying on the floor next to the fire, wearing Mabel's skirt, while Mabel was just finishing zipping up the pants that Beatrice had been wearing all day. Beatrice's eyes were open, but she didn't look like she was really looking at anything. She was breathing heavy. "Shit," Dipper said as he kneeled down next to her, and Wirt sort of elbowed him, but he didn't apologize. Greg peeped in over his brother's shoulder. Beatrice's right leg had a big purple spot on the front that, it was kind of hard to see in the firelight, but it looked shiny and wet. The sight of it made Greg uneasy. All the big kids looked the same way he felt. Sara stood up and walked across the room.

"I should have checked it more often today," Dipper said, empty in the voice. "Jesus. I shouldn't have let this happen…"

"'S not your fault," Beatrice rasped with her eyes closed, and then wrapped herself up in her arms and shook. "Fffuck, I'm cold."

"Dipper," Mabel said nervously, "is she gonna be okay?"

Being hurt didn't make Beatrice less grumpy. "Don't talk about me like I'm not here."

Dipper ignored her: "I don't – I don't know. I… I didn't have anything to sanitize…" He started to run his hands through his hair again, but all five of them jumped as a huge dragging sound came from the other side of the cottage.

Sara stood in the half-kitchen, using both her hands to pump a big handle up and down, a handle attached to a metal pole with a spout on it. Greg had never seen anything like it. She grimaced and stopped trying. "Somebody get me a water bottle." Mabel dug through Sara's backpack and tossed her the last full plastic water bottle. She unscrewed part of the pipe and started pouring the water inside.

Wirt sat up. "But that's the last of our…"

"I know," Sara grunted, and started pumping the handle again. It made a sound like a bathtub draining, that got closer-sounding, and closer, and then suddenly there was a squirt and water started pouring out of the spout. "Ha! _Unf._ I knew it! Greg, come here, give me your hat."

"My _hat?"_

"Bring it here." He did so. She pulled it off of his head and filled it with water with one shaky hand, while she used the other to keep pumping. It looked hard, so Greg crawled up on top of the counter and held the pan for her. When he got up there, he was surprised to see that the sink was only half there, but the water in it sloshed up against the cut of the house like there was an invisible wall. He thought that was pretty neat. Sara stopped pumping and took the panful of water and plopped it onto the grate above the fire. She huffed and dropped down again next to Beatrice.

"Tear up the rest of that shirt and boil it," she told Dipper. It seemed to take him a minute to hear the words, until he stopped staring at her and turned pink and did what she told. Sara was looking off at nothing, but she put a hand on Beatrice's shoulder. "No one's getting their leg amputated on my watch," she said grimly. Beatrice looked surprised, and then touched, and she patted Sara's hand back. Mabel seemed as impressed as Dipper did.

"I totally see why you dated her," she whispered to Wirt, and his face turned red.

So there they sat for a while and a while longer, and the night behind them got blacker and the voices in the forest got louder and sadder. Rain fell harder and lightning flashed and thunder tried its best to keep up with it. Greg kept looking over his shoulder into the forest, thinking it felt like someone was watching him, but the big kids were all too busy to think about stuff like that. Dipper fished the last bits of his shirt out of the pot of boiling water with his knife and laid them out on Beatrice's leg; Greg didn't hear what she said when he did that, because Wirt put his hands over his ears, but it was loud and she accidentally punched Sara in the shoulder during.

When that was done, Wirt and Dipper went to pull the half-a-bed away from the edge of the house, only to find the rest of the bed show up as they dragged it toward them, like it had been hiding under a curtain the whole time. They put the bed in front of the fire, and put Beatrice on the bed, and she laid there shaking, with her arm flung over her face and shiny sweat on her skin. Every time she breathed big and trembly, it seemed like everybody got tenser. Wind blew in through the missing wall and tossed rain at them. It made the back of Greg's neck cold. Everything in the room was half orange from the fire, and half blue from the forest. Mabel sat by the fire and rocked back and forth; "Uh, who wants to eat?" she asked, and the big kids all nodded unhappily.

Candy was passed out. The bag was getting empty. Greg's truffle bar didn't taste as good as it usually did. Eating it kind of made his head hurt, actually. The shadows out in the trees moaned like they knew how he felt. Beatrice ate one bite of the last Straw-Very and then put it next to her on the bed and laid quiet, looking green. The big kids all stopped talking to each other. The trees outside whipped around loudly, like they were jumping from scaredness of the lightning.

Then Greg thought he saw something dark move in the corner of the house. He squinted into the mess of tree roots on the wall, and realized for the first time that there was a little black cat curled up in the middle of them. None of them had noticed it sitting there when they got here. It blinked yellow at him. Greg was thrilled and was ready to tell everyone about the wall cat, but Sara started talking first.

"Tonight we're gonna boil as much water as we can," she told them all. "Then tomorrow we'll refill all the bottles we have, and stay put. It's dry here, and we'll find food. Start setting rabbit traps or something, I don't know. We'll stay as long as we need to. Getting to Gravity Falls is less important than making sure nobody…" She chewed on her lip. "Yeah." The others shared looks. Greg, for one, didn't dislike the idea of quitting walking for a few days, but his feelings were interrupted by the scratchy thoughtful words:

"That's a mighty admirable plan, child, but you young 'uns may find more trouble in it 'n you're expectin'."

Dipper was so surprised that he tried to stand up and just threw his legs out all over the place. Wirt jumped back where he sat. Beatrice croaked, "What the –?"

But Greg knew straightaway where the talking had come from. He looked at the cat, and it flicked its ears at him and kept going, "'Fraid she won't stay sleeping long, see. Not after I've gone." Its voice was low and sleepy and deep.

Greg crawled over toward it and leaned in across a root. It was curled up in a little nest of bricks and wood. "You talk!"

"I do," the cat said with a chuckle in its voice.

Beatrice whispered, "I feel like shit. Am I hallucinating the cat, or is it actually happening?"

"The cat is happening." Dipper straightened himself back out. "This is a new one, though. Never seen a talking cat before."

Mabel popped up next to Greg and asked the cat if she could pet him. The cat hunched up its shoulders and seemed to think about it. "Alrigh', child, I think that'll be fine."

"Well, aren't _you_ a gentleman tom!" She rubbed it behind the ear and it made happy rumbles that were so nice Greg decided to join her.

"What, now we're all petting the talking cat?" Wirt croaked. "We haven't all learned our lesson about talking animals yet?"

"Mind who you call an animal, young man," the cat purred. "I'm only tryin' t' do you children a kindness. Y'all look like you could use one or two." Wirt frowned, but didn't disagree. He took another bite of his chocolate bar with a little gag.

The cat draped its front half over a root and watched them eat. "You'll make y'selves sick, with so much sugar," it observed.

"Yeah," Dipper muttered, and tossed his wrapper into the fire. "Thanks."

"Consider eatin' a more balanced meal, t' keep y' strength up."

"Yeah, no kidding," Dipper said again. It didn't seem like he was trying to be rude, but Greg thought he didn't seem to like cats very much. "Very helpful. Do you know where we can find one?"

"Well, I'll confess to havin' a very different conception of a balanced meal than y'selves, but have you checked under your rear end?"

"Yeah, that's what I thought. Thanks again." But the cat looked at Greg and winked, and he couldn't help getting a strange feeling from it. A crazy thought made him follow its eyes, and he saw there was a little square cut into the floor right where Dipper was sitting. He gave the cat another look; it smiled. So he pulled his mouth to the side and tugged on the older boy's sleeve, and when Dipper saw where Greg was pointing, he stopped glowering and jumped straight up to his feet like a Mexican jumping bean. "Wait, what the hell…?"

The handle of the floor-door was tiny and rusted, but Sara's fingers were small enough to fit underneath. She pried the little trapdoor open. It came up with tumbling pine needles and clingy moss. Everybody, even Beatrice, leaned as close as they could to see what was inside. The space under it was just about big enough for Greg to have curled up in it if he'd wanted.

It was full to the top with fruits and vegetables.

The big kids seemed to all take a deep breath at once, and when they let it out Greg could almost hear five days of angry hunger go with it. They reached in across each other and started pulling out everything they could grab; potatoes and carrots and squashes and walnuts and sunflower seeds and beets and something Mabel called a parsnip, and even a few wrinkly apples from a little cloth sack on top. Wirt took one and stared at it in the firelight for a minute, and then handed it to his brother. It was dry and mealy, but Greg hadn't ever tasted anything so nice before. Or at least not since he ate some strawberries that morning. Dipper took an apple too, and closed his eyes as he chewed.

"Oh God," he said around a mouthful. "I never realized how much I missed fiber."

"How did you know this was here?" Sara asked the cat. The cat just smiled.

"I know everythin'," it said.

Lightning kept sparkling up the forest, but now it felt like there was electricity in the room, too. Even though the rain got harder and faster outside, inside seemed warmer, and louder, and the firelight was golden on the walls, perfect for a cold night. Dipper started chopping up the potatoes and parsnips and putting them into Greg's hat, and they filled it with fresh water and put it in the fire. Sara cut a squash in half and put it on the grate to roast. Even Beatrice tried to help by cutting up the rest of the apples, but quietly laid the knife down again after not too long. Only Greg saw how her hands were shaking. In the kitchen cupboards, they found wooden spoons and wooden bowls and a little bag of salt and a little bag of flour, and with those discoveries the potato-parsnip pot got turned into a stew. The air around them turned starchy and smoky and rich, the most wonderful smells in the world, and Greg's tummy growled in excitement. He tried to help with cooking, but Wirt wouldn't let him use the knife or go near the fire, so he went back to the cat instead and crawled up the roots to be next to it. He scratched the cat behind his ears, and the cat leaned into his leg and stretched his little legs out stiff.

"You're a great kitty," Greg said. "Thanks for showing us the food."

"Ah, don' worry your li'l head over it," the cat purred. "You an' your brother already showed you're the righ' sort, the las' time we met."

"Last time?" Greg couldn't ever remember meeting a talking black cat before. "I don't remember a last time."

"Don't imagine y' would. I was wearin' a different face back then." It sounded thoughtful: "Though so were you, in some ways."

That was a curious thing to say. Greg petted the cat until Mabel started singing about the food being done, and he jumped down and ran to get some.

The meal was gray and bubbly, but the children dug in without complaint. Greg had never, ever realized before that he liked vegetables so much. He ate squash and parsnips and plain old walnuts like they were his favorite foods in the world. Someone had put the chopped apples in the stew, and he hadn't ever even known that fruit in stew was an _option,_ but they made a lovely sweet crunch in the oversalted broth. The only problem with the food was that there wasn't very much. Greg gobbled down his bowl and looked wistfully at the small empty pot, resigned that good things couldn't last, but Dipper was already starting to chop more vegetables.

"How much should we eat tonight and how much should we save?" he asked the others.

"Give me more potatoooes," Mabel commanded from where she'd stretched out next to the fire, and her brother did just that. While they waited, Greg laid his head on Wirt, and Wirt laid his head on their backpacks piled up on the floor. Sara started braiding Mabel's hair, and from the bed, Beatrice made a sleepy joke about nuts that Greg didn't get, but it made everyone else laugh. Hunger had made all of them sharp and mean, but as the food bubbled on the fire, a soft cotton sheet seemed to fall over the room. The big kids were all talking to – not arguing, or throwing little jabs at each other, but just talking, like actual real friends. Beatrice asked Sara if she had any siblings ("One older sister," was the answer, responded to with "How did your parents manage stop at just two?") and Wirt asked Mabel to tell them more about the twins' summer in Gravity Falls. The cat purred quietly in the corner, and the tree it was curled up in asked Greg if he was happy. He closed his eyes. For the first time in a long time, he really was.

"…and eventually realized through process of elimination that giant vampire bats don't have the standard vampire weaknesses, but they _are_ very vulnerable to electricity." Dipper finished up the tale while his sister pulled the second pot of food out of the fire with her sweater sleeves wrapped around her hands. "That is real and valuable information, by the way. Remember it."

"I don't want to live in a world with giant vampire bats," Wirt frowned. "I was much happier before I knew about that."

"Glad I didn't tell you about what happens to your reject Halloween candy, then."

"This is delicious," Sara sighed as they passed the stew around again. "Or maybe my standards for good food are really low right now."

"I'm gonna say yes, since Dipper was involved in cooking it." Mabel laughed through her brother's dig into her ribs with his elbow. "Ahh, I'm joking. You're not _that_ bad at cooking. Remember that time you didn't burn the oatmeal?"

"Hey, cooking is hard," Wirt said with a spoon halfway to his mouth.

"You see?" Dipper gestured at him with a meaningful look at his sister. "It doesn't come naturally to everyone, Mabel."

Wirt added, "There are hot implements involved. It's dangerous."

"A person could get hurt!"

"This is just pathetic." Mabel gave Sara a suffering look. "Through the generations we're still all connected by men not knowing how to feed themselves, am I right, ladies?"

Beatrice coughed laughter. "My father would have starved to death years ago if he didn't have a wife and five daughters who know how to use a stove. You can't cook, Wirt?"

"I can, like… boil water and put things in it."

"That's not cooking."

Sara came to his defense: "He makes pretty good ramen."

"And lovin'!" Greg added around a mouthful of stew. "You said he makes a hot cup of lovin'!" The smile on Sara's face instantly disappeared and she turned bright red, and Wirt made a sound like he'd inhaled water.

"I – okay, no, I used that line _once,"_ Sara protested. Dipper rubbed the back of his head and tried not to make eye contact, but Mabel and Beatrice shook with laughter. "It was a joke. I swear to god, I don't actually talk that way. Oh my God, Greg, that was like a year ago, how do you even remember that?"

"It sounded so good!"

"Alright, you know what, you don't tell anybody about the things that Sara and I ever said to each other anymore, okay?" Wirt instructed, his ears bright red. "Especially the things you _shouldn't have heard."_

"No, no, I'm curious now," Mabel said through a toothy grin. "What goes into a hot cup of lovin'? Exotic spices? A splash of bourbon? _Cream?"_ Wirt's blush spread to his cheeks, and Sara buried her face in her hands.

"C'mon, Mabel, leave them alone," Dipper muttered.

Beatrice rasped from the bed, "I feel like they sort of walked into that one, though."

"I don't get it," Greg said.

"You know, Mabel, there are a lot of stories I could tell them about you and Pacifica. Tread carefully."

"You go ahead and tell them! I regret nothing."

"Even the time I found you together in the –?"

"Even that."

Sara said, "Pacifica sounds like a girl's name."

"Yeah?"

"And you're –? No, sorry, okay, you just made it sound like –"

"Yeah, we did. That's exactly what happened." They stared at each other for a second, and then Mabel's eyes grew wide: "Ohh my God, Sara, I forgot you don't know. Did they have bisexualty in the 80s, Dipper?"

"They most _certainly_ did."

Beatrice rolled onto her side and asked, "What's that?"

"That's when you wanna get with boys _and_ girls," Mabel said patently.

"Oh. Wait, that's an _option?"_ She still looked ill, but suddenly a lot more excited.

 _"Whoo,_ okay, boy, is it getting overwarm in here for anyone else?" Wirt asked, hunched up uncomfortably under his cloak. "I think maybe we should all move on to talk about other unrelated things that aren't this." Greg still felt like everyone was talking in circles around him, and looked down at Jason Funderburker for insight. The frog just shrugged. Mabel kept grinning as she turned to look into the fire, but slowly the smile fell away from her face.

"I wonder if Pacifica's okay," she said quietly, and the words were so surprisingly sad that Greg felt like they poked him in the throat, like an unhappy knife. He chewed on his lip and looked at the others. All their bowls were already empty again, except for Beatrice's, which she didn't look like she'd really touched. Uncomfortably, he kicked his feet, and then looked over to the cat once more.

"Hey, Mister Cat," he said. The cat opened its lazy eyes. "Do you wanna come by the fire? It's warmer here."

The cat yawned a little pink diamond. "That's mighty kind o' you t' ask, child, but I told you, she'll wake up if I leave this here spot. I think I'll stay."

"'She'?" Sara pulled her knees up to her chin. "Who are you talking about?"

"Why, th' mistress o' th' house, girl. You think _I_ built that fire?" It chuckled sensibly to itself.

"Wait, someone lives here?" Dipper clenched his fists. "Is she going to come back tonight?"

"Boy, she never left." The cat turned its chin up to the ceiling, and as it did, the roots spilling from the back wall seemed to suddenly swell, like a wave. Earth tumbled to the floor and dust fell from the ceiling. Wirt raised a hand to cover his face, and pulled the cloak around Greg. When he pushed it out of his face again, it was to the sight of a great woody arm reaching out from the mass of roots and rubbing groggily at a face hidden inside. The black cat, he realized, wasn't sitting in a nest of roots after all, but in someone's crisscross lap, a huge someone that none of them had noticed was wrapped up in the tree because she looked like she was made of trees herself. Her head touched the ceiling and rested on her shoulder, and her hair was red leaves and cobwebs, and the roots grew in and out of her arms and legs like they didn't know where they ended and she began. The giant old woman let out a snore and rolled her head to the other shoulder, and then went quiet again.

Greg was more interested than surprised: "Holy moly, who is that!"

"Jus' more kindlin' for the fire, I'm sure," the cat said. It sounded kind of sad.

"Holy crap." Dipper stared open-mouthed at the woman. "Is that – is she a witch or something?"

"Of a sorts. A child-eater, f' sure, if that's what you're askin'."

Dipper swallowed loudly. "Jesus Christ. You guys, I think we need to l–"

The cat cut him off. "Ahh, not hardly." It put its little black chin on a root that was also the woman's leg. "Well, not to say you aren't free to leave if it's stricken your fancy, o' course, but the Mother o' Tree Roots is a deep sleeper. More so 'n usual lately. More so 'n that, even, with a feline companion for the night." Wirt tugged Greg closer to him. Greg loved his brother, but he was getting a little tired of being pulled around like a puppy. "She won't wake till I've gone, and I'm not leavin' till mornin'. You young un's can afford to give y'selves a break. At least for tonight." The cat sat back inside its own neck ruff. "But I say again – 's your choice."

Dipper didn't seem to think the cat was trying to play tricks on them anymore. He glanced at Beatrice, still laying on the bed with her leg covered in wet rags, and nodded. "Okay. Fine. Tonight." He hunched his shoulders up and said again, like he was trying to make himself feel better: "At least we have tonight."

Greg sat back and regarded the big woman. She had a bumpy nose and skin almost as dark as Sara's. "Can she even get up?" he thought aloud to himself. "She looks tied up like the goats."

The cat perked its ears at him. "Ah, so y'met those two ol' bovids?"

"I think they said they were _brothers,"_ Greg corrected him kindly.

Wirt said, "Greg's right, though. She's all… woody. Just like the goats were." He reached out like he wanted to touch one of the roots, but lost his nerve. "How'd – how'd she end up in an Edelwood tree?"

"Well, granted I hadn't asked, but I'd imagine she lost a game to those ol' wolves," the cat said lazily.

Sara and Dipper exchanged looks. "Is every person we meet here going to be halfway inside a tree?"

"O' course not," the cat purred. _"I'm_ free as a bird."

A loud screamy wail came from around the back side of the house, and Greg felt his brother shiver next to him. "Okay, what _is_ that?" Beatrice turned her sweaty face toward the missing wall, looking upset. "What's going on out there? I'm about to lose it if I have to listen to that screaming for another night, I swear."

"'S a lost soul," the cat said. It sounded kind of sad. "Beggin' for someone t' look out for it."

"A lost soul," Dipper murmured. "That sounds like what the goats said about the Edelwood, too."

"Certainly," the cat purred. Dipper gave it a look. "Well, what? You're not wrong, child. I woulda thought you knew. The Edelwood's been followin' close on y' heels since this place first came to be. Lurkin' in the dark. Y' hear its voice every night."

"I'm so confused," Mabel said. "I thought the Edelwood was the _tree."_

The cat agreed, "It can be, when it takes root." It rubbed its cheek on one of said dirty roots next to it. "It can be a lot o' things. 'S your shadow when the sun goes down. 'S the feelin' o' realizin' you may never make it out of the woods. Not alive, anyway." The fire popped, and Greg jumped. "Th' Edelwood is the spirit, an' the Unknown is its body, an' I s'pose in that analogy the caretaker'd be the mind. And that'd mean the poor thing lost its mind when that ol' Beast got blown right out back in the day, wouldn't it?"

Sara's knuckles wrapped around her legs until they turned white. "So it's out there looking for its caretaker when we hear it at night," she said. "Just like the wolf said before it died." Wirt's hand was on Greg's shoulder, and when she said that aloud his fingers tightened till they started to hurt him.

Beatrice pushed shakily up onto her elbows. "It must be trying to find the Beast."

"Can't be," Wirt said hollowly. "The Beast is dead."

"What if there's another one out there?"

"I wouldn't worry y'selves about that," the cat said. Wirt and Beatrice looked at him at the same time. "I mean, there'll always be a caretaker of some stripe o' another, but if there's any luck in this world at all, there'll only ever be one Beast." Greg thought, for a second, that the Edelwood in the wall was trying to say something to him again, but he turned his ear and didn't hear anything. "Take my word for what it's worth, 'o course, but I've lived a long time in these woods, and I'll tell you true, children, things don't need to be a certain way jus' 'cause they always have been. That ol' Beast took joy in despair. He wanted his to be a forest o' surrender, and I know some o' you remember what sort of awful world that made. A black one. Cold." His voice put on a thinking tone: "I reckon that cold's what took so much away from him, in the end, now I think of it. Turned him into a shadow, couldn't even keep his own light lit. Sad, really. He was a mighty charmin' young man, back in the day.

"Th' Edelwood needs rules to live by, sure, but don't we all? There are as many ways t' approach death as there are ways to go about life. You boys in particular should know that." Behind Greg, his big brother was holding his breath. "Its caretaker can lead people down whatever path he likes."

"But how do you know all this?" Dipper asked, with just the littlest bit of edgy suspicion around his voice. "Aren't you supposed to be just a – a cat?"

The cat looked straight at him. Nobody had been talking, but everyone seemed to get quieter.

"I," it said, like a dad who wants you to understand something really important, "know _everythin'_ that goes on in these woods. Everythin', boy. Every stranger stalkin' 'neonate the trees, lookin' for the same thing you are. I know 'bout that bruise on the back of your head, and the _pine needle_ y'had in your eye. I know what the shadows are sayin'." Dipper glanced around and swallowed. The cat put a sly eye on the rest of them. "I know one of you feels like she don't belong with the rest, and another's got a bad seed bloomin' in his heart, and another still's not alone in his own head. I know what brought y'all here, an' I know you do too, and I know that the moment y' realized that was also the moment y' started to get real, real scared, and I know how wise that is, too, 'cos this world –" the cat flicked its tail above its head, to the massive roots holding the old woman in place "– is a dread place for children.

"Y'all want my advice?" the cat continued, and now everyone was watching it closely. "My advice is, none of y'all listen to nobody but each other. Not the trees. Not the birds. An' certainly not the voices in y' heads." It washed its ear with a curled paw. "You'll meet some here who'll call 'emselves your benefactors, but don't believe 'em. Hurry your feet and get where you're goin' fast as you can, 'fore y' demons catch up with you." Greg didn't know what the word _benefactors_ meant. Outside, the tree trunks striped with lightning and thunder ran to catch up behind. "Heck knows why you'd listen t' me, though," the cat chuckled suddenly, and yawned. "I mean – I'm jus' a cat, aren't I?"

"You are the scariest cat I've ever met," Mabel said uncomfortably.

"Awh, child." The cat batted a bashful paw at her. "Y' don' mean that."

Lightning cracked again. The cat stopped talking, but all the goofiness and fun that had been there before was gone again. It was nice while it lasted, Greg supposed. Eventually, Sara stood up to wash out the pan for boiling more water, while Mabel started filling up their backpacks with the rest of the food from the hole in the floor. Beatrice laid still on the bed, staring up at the ceiling with hollow eyes and shivers in her body. Mabel sat down on the end of the bed and held her hand and whispered a question about whether she was cold. Beatrice shook her head, but didn't object to taking Mabel's sweater when she took it off and laid it over her anyway.

Greg wanted to help clean up, but sleep was heavy in his tummy and in his eyes. He rolled over next to Wirt's leg and peeped out into the forest. The rain pitter-pattered like marbles on the leaves and soft ground. The trees didn't seem to mind the thunder and lightning. The trees didn't seem to mind almost anything, actually. They had a lot of admirable qualities.

Then something scratched suddenly in his throat, and when he tried to swallow it, it turned painful. He coughed, lightly and then harder. Something weird and woody hit the back of his mouth, and he fished it out with a _"Blehh."_

It was a little red leaf. He moved his tongue around to see if there were any more tree-bits in his mouth while he looked at it. He hadn't been eating any leaves lately, so it was pretty strange to find there; maybe it had gotten in with the food and he didn't notice. He wondered if he should tell Wirt, but decided not to. Wirt was doing enough worrying about him lately.

Greg was the first to fall asleep, and it took a long time for the others to drop off one after the other behind him. The fire got lower and lower, but the cat kept its yellow eyes on them, even through the dark.

* * *

 **SO I started working again in mid-March, which contributed heavily to this chapter taking approximately one full geological age to complete. The good news here is that more content was originally intended to be included at the end of this one, and was separated for length, meaning the next chapter is already more or less finished and should be up very soon, after a few minor edits. Sorry, and thanks, to those of you who have been sticking around through all these horrendously unpredictable updates, boooy howdy**

 **Come follow me at whiggitymacabee. tumblr. com and witness my sanity unravel in realtime**


	10. The Grinning Abyss

**Heyy yeah so this is gonna be a ~~dream chapter~~ and I feel the need to open up with a preemptive promise that it's happening for a good reason and definitely not because I'm stalling for time before I have to figure out the plot beats of the next few updates ha ha haaaa**

 **I don't usually do content warnings, but since it might juust barely break the boundaries of the posted rating, note that this chapter includes sexual content of a slightly stronger nature than what's been included so far.**

* * *

That night, every one of them dreamed deep.

–

Dipper dreamed he was sitting on his bed, in his room, in his parents' little two-story home in Piedmont. Three old leatherbound books were spread out in front of him on the comforter, handwritten and meticulously illustrated. Once upon a time he'd had these journals practically memorized, before they were lost; now, in dreams, he had them again, but the words turned to watery smears as he tried to devour them. The illustrations jumped before his eyes. He rubbed furiously at his face to help himself focus, but it only made the books fall away from his memory more quickly. He tossed them from the bed.

Agitated, he got up and walked downstairs with the intention of eating breakfast. When he made it to the ground floor, though, the house was no longer his own. He was in a rustic, whitewashed parlor, adorned by bluebirds in flaking paint. Wirt was there, for some reason, on a lounge next to the burning hearth. "Wirt?" Dipper asked, but the other boy didn't seem to hear him. He laid unmoving with hands clasped above his breast, like corpse. Vines grew up from under the furniture and spiraled around his arms and legs and chest and face.

Dipper backed out of the room, frightened for reasons he didn't understand, and turned. He found himself facing the living room of the Mystery Shack, where Soos was sitting in front of the television. Dipper ran toward him, asking for help, but Soos just turned around and lifted his eyebrows. "Dood, I need help too. Have you seen Melody?" Dipper tried to tell him that Melody didn't matter right now, Wirt was in the other room and he might be _dead,_ but Soos acted like he couldn't even hear him. "Yeah dood, like, I'm not tryna freak out or anything? But like, my kids are missing. I dunno how long you can _go_ with missing kids and not feel like you're kinda, heh, cracking up, y'know?"

That broke Dipper's single-mindedness. "Wait… the Sooslets are missing?"

"Yeah, dood. I mean, honestly I kinda don't even really know what to do anymore?" He twiddled his thumbs. "I guess I'm gonna try to go to Gravity Falls. It's better than curling up under a tree and lettin' a bear eat me, right?"

Wirt was dead and Soos's family was missing. How had everything gone so wrong? "Okay. Okay, I'll help you, Soos. I just gotta…" Dipper slumped, overwhelmed, against the wall. His vision blurred, and he put a hand over his left eye. When he pulled it away again, his palm was covered in blood, which he found concerning. He stumbled down the hallway to the bathroom so he could wash it off, but when he got there it turned out to be his and Mabel's upstairs bedroom in the Mystery Shack instead.

He hadn't seen this room in five years, but every detail, from the faded pink posters on the right wall to the shelves piled with birdcages and boxes, was still vivid. A sheet of morning sunlight cut down through the dusty window, where Sara was waiting for him. She turned to look when he entered.

"Hey," she said, and beamed to make his heart stop. "You were right. Gravity Falls is an amazing place. I'm so glad I got to see it."

"'Course," he croaked. "I… I knew you'd like it." She wore jeans and a flannel shirt that were shockingly evocative of uncounted childhood fantasies. She sat down on his bed and patted the mattress next to her with a tilt to her head and a suggestive look in her eye.

"You can join me if you want."

He _did_ want to, but weren't there other things he was supposed to be doing? "I can't," he said, combing his hands through his hair. "I… I have to –"

 _Oh, come on, don't you deserve something nice?_ a nasty voice suggested from over his shoulder. The words chilled him. Dipper looked back at Sara, and as he did, the denim and flannel were replaced with sheer purple lace. He swallowed, and as if it could read his mind, lace in turn yielded to an uninterrupted expanse of dark skin. His breath hitched in his throat. _C'mon, kid. It's just a dream._ _Take what you want._ She laid enticingly back against the pillows with splayed hair and parted lips, and took his hand. She pressed it against her chest.

The contact seared like an iron. He wrenched away from her. "No, no no no no…" These, the seeds of a good dream, were turning into the stuff of nightmares. He felt it in his gut. _Whatever, be that way. I'm not gonna force you to take advantage of a good thing._ He turned around, demanding to know who was doing this, but there was no one present – just an earthen tunnel extending through the wall of the bedroom and far away. He swallowed, dryly, and stepped into the bunker. "Who's there?" he called. His voice echoed in exactly the way of the one that urged him to act on his own worst impulses.

 _No one but us, Pine Tree!_ the voice responded. Pine Tree. Pine Tree. No. That was wrong. _Follow me!_ the stranger continued. _We've got something to do._

Dipper was self-possessed enough to falter, but not enough to refuse.

The bunker was as chilly and damp as he remembered. The walls reflected sick yellow from the string of bare lightbulbs hanging on an extension cord along the wall. "Who's in here?" he asked again.

 _You're obnoxious when you ask questions._

At the end of the corridor was an iron door, and it swung open when he lifted the latch. Inside stood a capsule in the middle of the room, with a rounded glass door. The cryogenic chamber. Dipper shuddered. The figure inside the chamber was not his own, like he'd left it so many years ago. It was female, tall, with a flare of red hair glimpsed through the frosted glass.

His heart plummeted. "Wendy?"

 _Oh, yeah. She's going to die in there if you don't get her out, you know,_ the voice said cheerfully. Dipper scrambled at the control panel, and the door of the capsule cracked open with a hiss and a pouring wave of mist. He shoved the door away with all his strength, and reached blindly into the fog. Auburn hair brushed his fingers. He squinted to see. One of his hands fell upon the girl's face, and the other on her leg. "Wendy!" he cried again, and when he did her eyes snapped open.

That was the moment he knew he'd made a mistake, but in the way of dreams, he wasn't sure exactly how. This wasn't Wendy, it couldn't be. Wendy's eyes were brown, not blue –

He woke up when the girl began to scream, and the dream shattered like glass against the day.

–

Sara dreamed of darkness first, and warmth. Within the dream her eyes were closed, and someone was holding her tight to their body. She wanted to roll over and go back to sleep, but when she tried to bury herself in the close embrace, something dug unexpectedly into her side and she cried out in pain. Her eyes opened with difficulty. It was dark gray afternoon, and she was high in the branches of a dead tree, its vines snarled around her legs and waist.

In the shadows on the ground, something lurked with great mad eyes. Fear tore her chest, and she pulled her father's gun from her belt, pointed it at the dark shape. "Why did you come back here?" She tried to sound brave. Maybe she even succeeded. The thing in the shadows stared, and smiled, with a wide void of a mouth that she vividly remembered the feeling of against her body, even to this day. "Just go. I don't want to hurt you." Tears fell from her tired eyes.

The grinning abyss said nothing, but took a step forward, and brought the darkness of the forest with it, like tidewater. It raised its great deerlike head and climbed the shadows in the recesses of the tree until it settled in the branches next to her. She'd known from the beginning that she wasn't going to be able to keep the promise that the pistol made. She let it fall from her hands. They sat together quietly in the warm rising swell of night. "Help me," she whispered to monster at her side. "Please. I don't want to die here."

Two eyes blinked yellow and blue back at her. She said, with tears on her chin, "What we had was never really love," because it seemed only fair that she should be honest. "But you still brought me here with you. That's what happened, isn't it?" No answer. She hadn't expected one.

Invisibly in the dark, the black beast wrapped its arms around her shoulders. Its color ran right down though her skin and into her veins, cold as saline. She trembled. The boundary between the two of them was thinner than she'd known. She'd never have guessed, when they were together, that they'd been forging a connection any deeper than that of their bodies. Would have she have still chosen to be with him, if she'd known then what she knew now? The branch digging into her flesh made her suspect not.

Gradually, the smiling shadow left her side, but the darkness that it had brought with it remained. "Don't go," she begged, but the monster had moved on. She was just a momentary object of pity. The tree wrapped her tight in its branches, trying to comfort, but the stabbing sensation remained; she bit her lip and tried to bear it. The wild-eyed beast opened its terrible mouth, but only to scream, in high ululating thrills like a tortured woodwind.

It was all too much, so Sara gave up. She curled in around the branch impaling her side and accepted exhaustion and grief, until the vines made their way to her heart and pinched it right out like a candle.

–

Beatrice dreamed she was in her room, in her bed, and the moon shone across the wooden floor before her eyes. A body pressed close to her back and an arm was wrapped around her waist, probably that of little Mary; Beatrice had few gracious words to say about sharing a bed with two of her sisters every night, but in autumn and winter she quietly welcomed their warmth, and this was no exception. She shouldered down into the comfort of the pillow with intent to sleep, but the arm against her ribcage was restless. It walked slowly up her side with two fingers.

She became conscious, gradually, that it couldn't be Mary in bed with her, not like this. Who, then? She tried to look, but couldn't find the strength. The hand on her side was growing bolder with each minute, raising goosebumps on her thighs under the covers and drying her mouth. Beatrice was suddenly struck with a thrilling fright at the realization of the person behind her. He shouldn't be here – she'd be in so much trouble if Mother found out – but she was so very glad he'd come.

His hands tightened around her waist, pulled her nearer. She flung an arm over his head and turned to him languidly, stretching her stomach alongside his. The heat of his breath was on her ear, and every place his skin found hers made static fog. Beatrice leaned in to kiss him with a belly full of sparking matchheads, and couldn't abide her hips sit still; she trembled so violently that she thought she might be laughing. They rolled into one another's arms until he was nearly on top of her, and his hands were everywhere, and her head fell back mutely against the pillow with thoughts of bliss.

The moonbeam was still bright on the floor, but now the shape of someone stood within it, and it had a terrible look on its empty face.

Beatrice shouted and tried to leap away from the vision in the light, but it was faster than her. The person lashed out and took her around the waist, dragging her kicking and screaming from the bed with strong rough arms. She tried to yell for help from her brothers, but a hand covered her mouth and flung her down onto the hard floor. The moonlight was blinding and she couldn't see her assailant as he grabbed her face and her leg with burning fingers, and forced her to look at him.

He leaned into the light. He only had one eye.

–

Wirt dreamed he was standing in the dark hall of his childhood home, agitated and alone. The knob of his mother's bedroom door was at face height, and he turned it two-handed, feeling frustratingly small and weak. The door pushed inward a crack and a golden column of light widened across his face; "Mom?" he called as he stepped into a room furnished by giants. He scuffed his feet on the blue carpet that he still remembered helping his dad put down, once upon a long-ago time. "Mom?"

His stepfather was standing by the far side of the bed, gazing down at something on top of it. Wirt jumped and grabbed and scrambled and finally pulled himself atop the mattress with short breath. "Mom?" he asked again, but there was nothing upon the expanse of quilt and feather pillows but a little baby swaddled in green. Wirt was filled with immediate disappointment.

"Go on, Wirt," his stepdad said, putting his hand on his back. He shied away from it. "Hold him. This is you new little brother."

"I don't want a brother," he said, turning to his stepdad. "Where's my mom?"

But his stepfather had disappeared. It was nighttime, and he was in the woods, the same woods he'd been haunting in body and mind for days now. He turned in a circle, scared out of his wits and unable to remember who he'd been looking for up till now, until he realized that he wasn't quite alone; his little brother still laid on the ground in a bed of leaves near his feet, staring up at him with big gray eyes. Guilt tore Wirt's chest and he gathered up the infant in his arms, held him over his shoulder and clutched him tight. Someone was moving out in the trees. Someone tall and black.

The Beast blinked slowly, wolflike, and said, _Give the boy to me._

No matter how long he lived, or how old he grew, Wirt would never forget the sound of that voice. He felt so scared that he thought he might fall, but he held his little brother tightly nonetheless and said, with a voicebox full of courage he didn't feel, "You're dead."

 _I am dead,_ the Beast gutturalized, _but you are not._

The Beast reached out for him with a long pale arm full of despairing eyes. Wirt was nearly paralyzed, but stepped and stumbled backward, preparing to flee. Then he looked down and realized that Greg was gone from his arms. He was left holding a desiccated bundle of leaves and twigs instead. He let them fall, and the debris landed in a blackberry bramble at his feet.

"You took him," Wirt said, looking up. The Beast said nothing. "You took him! You took Greg!" Anger displaced his fear, not entirely, but enough. _"You took my little brother!"_ He started forward, desperate for a sign of him. "Give him back to me! You can't do this!"

The Beast just disappeared before his eyes, like smoke.

Wirt was falling apart at the seams. The trees around him were writhing, trying to tell him something he couldn't understand. " _Give him back to me!"_ he cried to the sky, to anybody who might be listening. "Please! Y-you can't…" And then he had an idea. "Take me!" he cried, and put out his hands as if asking to be cuffed. "Take me! Give him back and take me instead!"

The woods were still moving around him excitedly, trees creaking, wolves howling. A storm was brewing. Now there was rain in the air. He said it again, into the wind: "Take me!" Lightning fissured the sky. "I'll do anything! _Bring my brother back!"_

He didn't remember anything of the dream after that. His mind's eye stayed empty until he woke.

–

Mabel's dream was only half a dream. The other half was a memory.

The memory was warped, of course; the moment in question hadn't taken place in her parents' basement, and there had been more people there in real life – Robbie, Pacifica, others. The walls had not been lined in curling thorns and brambles either, like the Oregon wilderness itself was trying to stage a protest of the events unfolding, but other details were frighteningly well-remembered. The cracked earth ceiling and the sparking control panel on the wall. The glow of Ford's portal in the center of the room, and the awful wind it kicked up, blowing Mabel's hair in her face and watering her eyes.

She knew this moment intimately. She remembered. Her leg was trapped under a fallen beam from the ceiling, and her left index finger was broken – not a debilitating injury, but hot and painful. Her brother had taken her hand when she tried to confront him in front of the activated portal, and twisted until bone cracked.

He'd _smiled._

Now Dipper was crouched in front of the glowing doorway, in a pool of light rich with cold color. He'd been felled by the same collapse as she, when the portal's vibration grew violent enough to cause structural damage, but unlike her, he was already standing again. He had an awful look in his eyes when he turned them up, and grinned through the sheet of blood flowing down his face. A deep slash carved straight through his birthmark. Mabel heaved to see it.

 _"Sorry to leave you stuck there, Shooting Star,"_ her brother crowed, standing jerkily, like a marionette with an amateur on the strings. _"But – oh, who am I kidding? I'm gonna LOVE making you watch while this thing tears open your space-time!"_ Mabel shook her head, once and then over and over. She couldn't stop. Dipper's words were snakebites and she was getting woozy.

 _"Let him go, Bill!"_ Uncle Ford's voice echoed from the shadows, but Mabel couldn't see him. She was trapped, unable to move, just an observer to a moment she couldn't change even in her own dreams. _"He's just a child! He's not strong enough for you! Take me instead!"_

 _"No dice, Sixer!"_ Dipper – Bill – spat, wiping red from his mouth. _"You know, I'm kinda comfortable in here! I think I'll stay, at least until I've finished remodeling this universe so I can move in!"_ Dipper laughed, and collapsed, and vomited on the floor and then stood up again. Mabel wanted to cry, but her innards felt frozen. No part of her could move.

A small dart sputted from the darkness and caught her twin brother in the arm. He roared with anger, as much as a twelve-year-old can roar, and wrenched it out, but the damage was already done. He started to sway.

 _"Leave him, Bill! He can't handle you being in there any longer!"_ Uncle Ford was here now, stepping into the light where Mabel could see him, holding a syringe against his own arm. His face was a hard line, and his gray hair caught in the wind. _"I'm going under! My mind is open to you! Take me instead, just leave the boy out of this!"_ He put the needle under his skin. Mabel hadn't been there to see it in close-up at the time, but the dream offered new perspective, and the sight was an imagined amalgam of every blood donation and IV injection she'd ever had. She felt sick.

 _"Uncle Ford, don't do this!"_ she tried to beg him. He didn't hear her, either in the present or the past. Dipper fell to the ground, and Ford stood there, heaving, for a second longer, until he also collapsed.

Mabel cursed her impotence. She kicked at the beam holding her down, but with all her strength, she couldn't move it more than an inch at a time. She tried to scream, but she wasn't sure she was making any noise at all. _"Uncle Ford! Grunkle Stan! NO!"_ Nothing and no one responded to her pleas. There was nothing she could do but wait through those one, two seconds when both her brother and uncle were still on the ground, until the moment when Ford started to stir again.

He stood. He stumbled. Mabel's eyes filled with tears. Ford looked up, and doubled over, and a grimace split his face.

 _"Fine, Sixer!'_ he barked aloud, speaking to himself. _"You want this? You want me to use you instead?"_ His fingers ripped at his turtleneck. _"Fine! Have it your way! We'll work together, see? We'll make sure Pine Tree never gets hurt – ever – AGAIN!"_

The timing was – always had been – too perfect, and in the dream, it played out crystalline, as if relishing its own precision. Ford's body jerked toward Dipper's prone form, toward the whirling and shaking portal that seemed close to bursting. His – Bill's – right boot lifted from the ground, lending a precarious moment to an already-unsteady puppeteering gig. The boot began to fall toward her brother's ear.

Then footsteps rushed from the shadows. Grunkle Stan. Grunkle Stan was coming! Where had he been all this time? It didn't matter. He was here now. This time, he'd be able to fix everything. Things were going to be okay.

Stan barreled into his twin brother's shoulder, knocked him straight backwards, sent his feet wheeling against the ground. Bill was still getting used to such a massive form after spending so long in Dipper's, and his momentum was unaccounted for. He stumbled behind the yellow tape on the concrete floor and lifted into the air before their eyes, a black shape crucified against the light of a thousand other worlds.

All exactly according to Ford's plan.

Bill screamed when he was pulled back into the portal. Cries for mercy, promises of revenge. Mabel sobbed. Stan just stood there, unflinching, glasses mirrored white. Bill kicked and scrabbled against nothing and, extremity by extremity, he disappeared back into the blinding whiteness of his terminal world. His words were cut off with a whimper, not a bang. The light pulsed as it consumed him, and the earth above and around them shook.

Mabel had forgotten, almost, that she was trapped. She pulled with all her might, and finally dragged her leg out from underneath the ceiling beam, leaving behind her shoe and a lot of skin. She didn't care. She scrambled for her brother, taking him by the shoulders and sobbing for him to wake up. His head lolled. He had bags under his eyes and bile at the corners of his mouth. _"Dipper!"_ she said, over and over and over again. _"Dipper, wake up, please…"_

She hardly noticed when Stan, silently, hit the button to deactivate the portal. She didn't care when the light faded, and the grinding technology slowed and quieted. She just cried, and kept on crying until the living memory faded out, and the only things left in the world were her and the salt on her face. It was still there, a little bit, when she woke up.

–

Greg dreamed that he was awake.

He felt like one of those mornings where his mom woke him up for school, and he thought he'd pulled himself out of bed and gotten dressed and eaten breakfast but then woke up in bed again anyway when she called him a second time, and it kept happening again and again. He blinked his eyes open and sat up in the same place where he'd fallen asleep on the floor next to his brother, only this time with the funny feeling that he didn't weigh as much as he should have. The world looked different, in the dream. It was dark, but he could still see fine. It had stopped raining, and the woods were quiet, and the world was a hundred million shades of blue. Even the last bit of the fire in the fireplace was blue. It was like living under the sea.

The trees outside seemed bothered. Greg caught them saying the same thing over and over: _Go, she-wolf. It doesn't want you here. Leave. Be free. Go._ He could guess what a she-wolf was, but didn't know why the trees were saying it until he turned to look out the missing wall, and froze. A wolf was standing out there in the trees, staring at him. Its eyes were the only yellow thing in the whole blue world. Greg's heart leapt, and he snapped a hand back grab his brother's leg.

"Wirt," he squeaked, "Wirt!" But Wirt didn't respond. Greg could feel him move when he jaggled him, but his body was light, even lighter than Greg's. This _was_ a dream, though, he reminded himself, and that made him a little calmer.

"Do you want something?" he asked the wolf, hoping for the best but expecting the worst. The wolf didn't talk like it had used to. It just whimpered, and put its front end close to the ground, begging or bowing. "What?" he asked again.

The wolf said, " _Arwwwoo,"_ and sent its eyes over his shoulder. Greg turned around. A stranger was standing next to the bed by the fire, and putting a black hand out to touch Beatrice.

Greg jumped straight to his feet. _"Hey!"_ If he shouted loud enough, maybe the others would wake up, but his voice came out too small. If Wirt had been the one yelling, it would have sounded better. He balled up his fists, like his dad had taught him to if he ever needed to fight, just in case. "Who are you? What are you doing?"

The person at the back of the house stopped and straightened up when he heard Greg speak. "Well, well, well, well, well," a voice said back to him. A chill went up his spine. It was a strange voice; it sounded like it was shouting, even though it wasn't loud. "Look who we have here! We finally meet, face-to-face!"

A man-shape stepped toward Greg, but it was a triangle shape that came out of the shadow. Just a yellow triangle, with one eye and a bowtie. Greg had never seen anything like it before. Was this even a person?

It was rude to stare, though. "Um. Who are you?"

"Ha! Ha ha ha!" laughed the triangle. He had little hands, and put them up to his chest, like he thought it was really funny. "Boy, it's sure been a long time since I've gotten to introduce myself to someone new! My name's Bill! Bill Cipher! Nice to meet you, Candy Pants!"

When the triangle said his name, the wolf outside started yelping and howling. Greg turned around. The wolf jumped back and forth, baring its teeth. "Arrrrrrooooh!" it yelped. The triangle narrowed his eye.

"Alright, you busybody, that's enough." The triangle snapped his fingers and the wolf disappeared into the air, just like that.

Greg stood very still. "How did you do that?"

"This is a dream in a world _made_ of dreams, kiddo!" the triangle told him, and made a happy tent out of his fingers. "Boy, I haven't had this much power in five Pines-years!" Greg didn't know what he meant by that. This triangle seemed nice enough, but he wished he hadn't made the she-wolf go away. It wasn't doing anything really wrong.

"Will the wolf be okay?"

"Probably! I'm sure it'll have plenty of opportunity to annoy you again when you're awake!" said the triangle, Bill. Greg was trying to remember that name. Something about it seemed familiar, but he couldn't recall. "But for now, kid, I want us to get to know each other! How you been doing lately? You holding up?" The triangle kicked back like he was sitting in the air, and flipped his hand so a fancy-looking drink appeared in it.

"Oh. I'm alright." Greg fiddled his fingers. "Well, um, okay, I guess I'll start at the beginning? My name's Greg, and –"

Bill said, "Yeah, yeah, sure thing, Candy Pants," with his eye drifting over back toward Beatrice. "So hey, kid, listen," and all of a sudden he was down by Greg's shoulder and throwing an arm around it. "I hear you've been having a pretty rough time lately, yeah?"

He thought about that. "Well, I'm lost in the woods and my socks have been wet for two days straight. I miss my mom and dad and everybody was fighting for a long time and I didn't know how to make things better. I don't think I really like eating candy anymore and Beatrice is hurt and –"

"Ho boy, that she is!" Bill shot out his little hands and feet in the air, like he was trying to make a snow angel. "The Bluebird's a real trooper, but she's getting worse lately, isn't she? She could even die! That would sure be awful!" Greg squirmed. "I tell you kid, I've been watching you for a while now, and I like you! You've got guts!" The triangle poked him in the stomach. "That's why I've decided – I'm gonna help you out!"

That perked his interest. "How?" But then he remembered the more important question that he'd been distracted from since realizing he was talking to a triangle: "What are you doing here?"

"Oh, don't mind me!" Bill fluttered his eyelashes and flipped a hand. "I've just been hanging out the last few days! Watching, waiting, all that good stuff! And out of everyone in this unworkable mess of humanity -" he rolled his eye at the big kids on the floor "– I think you've shown yourself to have the most potential! I'm here to make sure you know the name Bill Cipher! I think we're gonna be great friends! Really – _great – friends!_ " His eye got bigger and yellower with each word. Greg took a step backward.

"Um… I dunno," he mumbled. He didn't want to be rude, but this didn't feel right. "I think I should tell Wirt you're here."

"Aw, come on, kid! There's no need to do that!" The triangle perched thoughtfully on the mantle above the fireplace. "I mean, not that you could even if you wanted to! The only people really here are you and me, anyway! Ha ha ha ha ha…!" Then he serioused up: "I mean it though, kid! You and I have a lot in common!"

"But you're a triangle."

"A triangle! That's rich!" Bill laughed again. "Nah, kid, I'm not just a triangle! No more than you're just a kid!"

"I _am_ a kid."

"Nah. You know what we're gonna be, you and I?" Greg shook his head.

The eye turned bright bloody red. "We're going to be _GODS."_

Bill lifted his hands, and with a crack and a roar, the roof splintered and flew right off the house. Greg fell backwards with wind whipping his hair. All the clouds in the sky had disappeared, and the big half-moon was above their heads, turning everything silvery on top of the blue. The Edelwood tree growing up around the back of the house creaked and spread its branches into the air, like a stretching hand. Greg grabbed at his brother's arm. Still, none of the big kids would wake up.

"I mean, would you look at this place!" Bill cried, becoming bigger and bigger as he rose into the air, in front of the moon. "Look at this world Stanley made for us! Part real world, part dream, part unknown!" He cartwheeled in place. "All it needs is a little more time, kid! A little more time to incubate, before this little mixed-up bubble pops and floods across all of reality! And then you and me, we'll be kings and deities! Lords of dreams and darkness! Is it just me, or does that sound great?!" He winked at Greg, and it was definitely a wink, somehow, even though there was only one eye involved.

Greg leaned back and stared. He hadn't been able to see the sky this well since Halloween night. It was even bigger and blacker than he remembered. He was going to ask a question, but Bill beat him to talking. Heat seemed to radiate off of all three of his sides. "I've been sleeping for a long time, kid! Just a little sliver of the wonder and terror that is _me_ , trapped inside of the head of a _teenager!_ Can you imagine anything more humiliating?" Greg had been looking forward to being a teenager for a long time now, actually. He gulped. "This place, though!" Bill lifted his little hands to the sky. "This place is part mindscape, and that means it's part _me."_ Lightning cracked across the starry sky and turned the world green, just for a second. "I'm awake again, and I'm getting stronger! And I've got plans! Big plans! _Universe-sized_ plans! Ha! Hahahahaha ha ha! Ha… ha…"

But then Bill stopped rising in to the sky, and dropped his hands again. He gazed off for a second, and then looked back at Greg. "But I'm not the only one who's getting stronger, am I? This world is partly the stuff of me, but it's partly the stuff of you, too, kid!"

"What?" Greg asked. He clutched at the front of his sweater, but Jason Funderburker wasn't there to make him feel better. The frog was curled up behind Wirt's head, smiling in his sleep. "No, that's not right. I'm not from here. I'm just visiting."

Bill rolled his eye. "Yeah, sure, kid, just visiting! And while you've been _visiting,_ you've attracted a lot of attention, not just from me! The god of this world got its roots in you pretty good back in the day, I hear! And I guess it must have liked you, because it wants you back!" He snapped a finger and pointed out into the woods. "So you're gonna be handed a lot of responsibility soon! And I figure if we're gonna be co-rulers when the rest of the multiverse succumbs to our respective realms, we should make sure we get off on the right foot! So I say again –" Bill held out his hand and kicked out a jaunty foot "– the name's Bill Cipher, and I think you and I are gonna get along famously!"

Greg looked at his hand, and shook it cautiously. He didn't understand a lot of what Bill said, but he seemed nice enough, right? "I do like making friends," he reasoned out loud.

"Absolutely! There's just one thing I've gotta ask you to do, kid!"

"What's that?"

The triangle threw his arms out. "Don't tell anyone that we talked here! Don't mention my name! In fact, it'd probably be best if you forget that we spoke at all until you see me again!"

Greg wanted to think the best of Bill, but that struck him as awfully strange. "But –"

"I know, I know. You'll want your brother to know about this fantastic dream you had tonight, right?" Bill rubbed where a chin would be. "But you gotta trust me kid, I've got a plan to help all of us! Your friends, too! But I need my name to stay out of it! Understand?" Greg nodded hesitantly. "I want you to know I'm your pal, though, Candy Pants! And I'm gonna prove it to you!" Bill threw up his hands and blue fire sparked in his palms, the same color as the embers in the wall. Greg stood up as the triangle turned and, again, lifted a hand toward Beatrice.

Greg was interested now more than scared, but he still asked, "What are you going to do?"

"Just a favor for my best new buddy," Bill said, and tipped his hat at him. "Fair warning, she _might_ scream, but take my word for it, she's gonna love it!" The triangle smiled a big toothy smile at him, somehow again using only his eye.

"Why is –?" Too late. Bill turned to Beatrice's prone form and grabbed her, on her face and her leg.

He was right; she did scream. It started at surprise, and turned quickly to pain, and kept on going until it strangled on a hurricane wind that blasted out of the sky like to blow them right out. The trees bent and lashed crazily. Greg dropped to his knees and clapped his hands over his ears. He wondered if this dream was starting to turn into a nightmare. Noise cracked the ground, made green lightning split the stars again, shrunk the moon, sent the roof flying back onto the house, tile by tile. He couldn't even open his eyes to see if Beatrice was okay; the scream and the wind were the same thing, both beating at his knuckles. He curled up as tight as he could and thought that he should stand, run, anything to get away or to help, but then something hit him hard in the side and –

–

Greg opened his eyes as he rolled with the little kick Wirt had accidentally landed in his ribs. Everything was so immediately different that it was almost the most confusing moment of his life. The sun falling through the house was too bright to see in, and Jason Funderburker was hopping over to him with a worried look, and everybody was yelling at the same time about something Greg didn't understand.

The only thing that had followed him from the dream was Beatrice's voice. She really was screaming, and as she kicked out hard, Dipper went stumbling away from her, into the half-kitchen. _"What the hell are you doing?!"_ she screeched.

Sara was on all fours by the end of the bed, looking like she didn't understand things any better than Greg did. "Bea, what the –?"

"He grabbed me!" Beatrice sat up in bed and pulled her knees up to her chest. "He grabbed me while I was sleeping and –"

"I'm s-so sorry!" Dipper had his hands on his face. His voice shook. "Jesus Christ, Beatrice, I'm so sorry, I – I don't know –"

Wirt asked, "Beatrice, are you hurt?"

"He was sleepwalking," Mabel insisted. She tried to pull her brother to his feet. Her hair was a sleepy brown puffball. "He used to do it all the time when he was younger, it's just an old –"

"Did you see it? He grabbed my _face!_ I couldn't breathe –"

"Are you okay?" Dipper stood up and stumbled toward her, and she scooted away to the far end of the bed. "Did I hurt you?"

Sara insisted, "She's fine, look at her, she's fine," and put a hand on his shoulder as he walked by, but he jumped away from her touch. Greg's eyes skipped up to the tree in the wall. The roots were starting to move. He swallowed, and tugged on his brother's cape.

"Wirt?" he asked, but Wirt wasn't listening.

Beatrice was still arguing that Dipper had terrified her, Dipper kept apologizing, Mabel kept defending him, and Wirt and Sara were still trying to get the shouting to stop. But the big tangle of voices came up short all at once when they heard a much bigger rumble. The woman in the tree was stirring, slowly turning her head back and forth and unbending her legs. The black cat that had been sitting in her lap all night furled slowly down the roots like they were stairs, and jumped to the ground.

"Well, a raucous g'mornin' to you too, children," it drawled as the woman opened her mouth to yawn and raised her woody hands to rub at her face. "I wasn't plannin' on leavin' so early, but I doubt I could keep 'er in dreamland any longer even if I wanted to." Two bleary green eyes peeped open from the darkness between the roots. "I 'magine she'll be upset when she sees you've eaten her food, so it's probably best you get y'selves goin'."

Suddenly, their argument didn't seem so important anymore.

Mabel started grabbing everything she could and the others ran to do the same. The sun got shorter and shorter on the floor as Greg watched. It was only a minute before Wirt took his brother's hand as the group left the little part-house into the songbird forest, jogging awkwardly with stiff sleepy muscles. Greg looked back as best he could and waved a hand at the black cat where it sat at the edge of the house. It blinked a yellow goodbye.

They ran for a while, until everybody was puffing cold smoke and holding their hands to their sides, and finally started to slow down. It didn't sound like anyone was coming after them, anyway. Greg still didn't know if the tree woman could even get up. Eventually, their fear faded out, and Greg had his first opportunity to say hello to the trees, and listen to the birds. The sunshine was pink and the ground was bright white, and everything was dry. The rain had left the ground when it left the sky, too. The whole group walked with their noses in the air, watching the treetops.

It was a while before anyone noticed that Beatrice wasn't limping anymore.

The ugly cut on her leg had healed to a faded scar.

* * *

 **Come join me in smutting up children's media at whiggitymacabee. tumblr. com**


	11. Man on the Edge

**The one-year anniversary of this story's publication was over a month ago now.** **...** ***Sigh***

11

 _Childhood was a blurry, watery place. Up there, on the wall, a clock – a gawking owl, rolling its plastic eyes side-to-side on the beat of the second hand. Soos picked up his Hot Wheel from the orange carpet of_ abuelita's _sewing room, and ran in a circle with the car in the air before him, whisking its tires with his other hand to complete the illusion of driving._

 _Then the door opened, and he stopped. He turned and squinted at the shape outlined in the bright light, unfamiliar and inviting. In shock, he dropped the toy on the floor, even though he knew his grandmother would be mad when she stepped on it later. The light got brighter and brighter. He closed his eyes and stepped toward it with hands outstretched, feeling for a skirt hem, a nylon stocking, a soft hand with a gold ring around the finger…_

"…Momma?"

 _–_

Soos opened his eyes. The light in the doorway was the sunrise, winking past orange leaves on drooping branches. He sniffed and scooted up blearily against the tree where he'd fallen asleep, blinking heavy little drops of tiredness off his eyelids. The air was morning-chilly, but his jacket was warm. The rain had gone away and opened up to the strawberry-lemonade sun. A weak tug brushed his sleeve. He looked down, and found a little squirrel at his elbow with a fat walnut in its mouth.

"Aw. Thanks, little dood," he said, and received the tiny meal with grace. The squirrel chittered and fluffed its tail. "You wanna join me for breakfast?" The small animal seemed nervous, though. It ran around in a little circle and then straight up the tree he was leaned against. He watched it go with acceptance. Nature is as nature does.

He cracked the nut with a stone, and sat quiet with his thoughts for a while as the sun pulled itself up through the tree branches. It had been a rough week. Almost-week? He was starting to lose track. He'd sorta lost track a while ago, actually. Soos had spent a lot of time in the woods when he was a kid, but in Gravity Falls that still never required straying more than a few hundred yards from the safety of someone's wood shed or the dumpster behind a fast food restaurant. This was _real_ woods. In a lot of places the sun hardly touched the forest floor; something really far away spent every night screaming, which was pretty weird; and golly did the ground around here get wet and stay that way. Very unpleasant. He hadn't exactly done a good job of packing for this kind of camping trip the morning after Halloween, either – he'd been thinking about a lot of other stuff at the time, so he only really had his jacket and boots and… that was really it. Also, it was pretty hard to see where exactly the sun went down from under the tree canopy, so he was only really _sort_ of sure he was going the right direction most of the time. So, overall – yeah, rough week all around.

The animals helped, though. He was pretty tight with the beasts of the wild, if he did say so himself, and he appreciated their company. Birds gave him berries, does led him to water, a family of foxes had been willing to share their hole one night. It made the days less lonely, on a long journey 'round the mountain. As he thought it, a dozen more walnuts fell from the branches and pattered in the loam around his feet.

Squirrels are real bros.

The only part he couldn't really shake was the isolation. It turned out that the forest felt pretty big when you couldn't hear Highway 26 humming in the background anywhere. As he told himself at night, though, when the air was cold and the screaming in the distance got particularly violent: he was The Soos. Things always turned out okay for him. As the morning sun stretched its fingers out over the ground, he finished off the last of the nuts, put a hand on the tree trunk behind him, and _hupp_ ed to his feet. Birds were talking over one another and the air had already started warming up. Breeze swayed the tree branches. "Another day in the wilderness," he announced, to nobody in particular. He didn't expect a response, though it would have been nice.

The squirrels had been good to him, but they didn't really talk back, y'know?

Sometimes, without meaning to, he brought his family along with him on the trail. Melody would have liked it here, he knew. She'd have linked her arm in his and started humming a song about birds in springtime. _"De colores."_ She liked that one. Stan Jr. would be stepping carefully to avoid any and all mushrooms, ferns, and pinecones, and Margie would already be halfway up a tree and learning the language of the porcupines. The woods weren't scary when they were together. You can't be lost when you can take your home with you.

But he shoved his hands in his pockets, put those thoughts in a pine cone, and kicked them away. Thinking that was way wasn't so good for him. All wishes and no genie makes Soos a sad man. Take a deep breath.

…

Anyway, it was time to get going.

The slivers of sky above were blue, and the rain had gone away and left the world dry and pleasant. It was gonna be a great day! So he cleared his head, straightened his windbreaker, and took a deep breath to embark on day – five, was it now? six? – with a little smile on his face. The birds were singing, the sun was strong and bright, and he was getting closer to Gravity Falls every hour. He parted the ferns broadly to take that first step out into the wild of a new morning of adventure. And he heard –

 _"…Momma?"_

Soos stopped.

That wasn't right. Couldn't be. Cos it sounded for a just second he'd heard Stan's little voice out here, but… heh, there was that wishful thinking again, huh? And if wishes were fishes, then… He couldn't remember how the thing ended. 'We'd all be doing dishes'? He started walking again with his hand in his chin.

 _"Momma?"_

He froze with a foot suspended in the air.

Could he be wishful-thinking that? The voice was tiny and sad and not so far away. "Stan?" he asked, cupping his hands around his mouth and looking every which way. "Stan? Is that you? Margie?"

He expected a bird to sing at him, but the voice said again, _"Momma!"_

This was not a drill.

Soos ran as fast as he could. His design was not aerodynamic, but he was good at knocking things out of his way when he picked up enough speed. Sun skipped across his eyes as he barreled past tree trunks and shrubs. "Margie!" he cried, hands cupped on his mouth. "Stan! I'm comin', kids! Daddy's comin' to –"

He burst past a fat rhododendron bush and skidded to a stop.

A small nut-brown girl was standing in the middle of the clearing between two cedars. Not Margie – a little older, a little darker, less rotund. She wore a long, shapeless white dress, and her hands clutched at her face while she cried. Leafy branches grew from her back and shoulders and elbows. As he burst onto the scene, she looked up with a gasp and pressed her fists to her chest. Her eyes were wide-spaced and blackdark, and her cheeks were streaked with tears.

"Oh, sorry," he said and lifted his hands up to show no harm. "I didn't mean to scare –"

"Who are you?" the little girl shot at him, hunching up her shoulders and glowering. "You're not my momma."

Soos took just a brief second to process his disappointment over the voice's source, and decided to get over it. "Oh, yeah, nah, not even close. But I heard you crying and –" He tilted his head at the branches crooking out of her back. "You lost, kiddo?"

She scrubbed her face with her palm and went back to crossing her arms. "I want my _momma!"_

"Yeah. Me too," he admitted, and dropped down crisscross applesauce on the ground. "Do you need some help?"

The little girl's lip trembled. She blinked and, slowly, dropped her defensive stance. She looked him up and down once, and then mirrored him by dropping to her knees, and stared across the ten feet between them with big deery eyes. "…Who are you?"

"Oh, y'know. Just a dood." Way up high, a bird whooped twice and went silent. "My name's Soos. Y'know, I'm, uh, lookin' for some people out here, too."

"What's a soos?"

"That's me, dawg!" He put a thumb against his chest. "All-purpose handyman, two-time apocalypse survivor, and world's best dad!" Her face was still wet, but that made her smile. "I got a Sooslet about your age. Don't suppose you've seen her around, huh?"

"Umm… no. I don't think so."

"Yeah." He reminded himself that he'd already processed that disappointment. "Didn't think so." He waited on the ground while she straightened her back and _snrk_ ed up tears. The leaves on her shoulders were fiery red. "So, uh… how'd you get lost, kiddo?"

She let her head fall backward and looked up at the trees, seeming unhappy that he'd asked. "I dunno," she mumbled.

"Well, where'd you last see your mom?"

"At home."

"Yeah, for sure. So, um… where's that?"

The little girl picked up a stick and started drawing in the dirt in front of her. "I dunno," she mumbled. "I was a tree back then."

Children, Soos reflected wisely, are tricksy things. Stan Jr., for instance, had once spent three straight months refusing to outright tell Melody that he had a specific favorite bedtime story, despite growing extremely depressed each night that she failed to read him the correct one. Kids have so many thoughts all the time that there's not a whole lot of room left in their heads for making sense, and a coherent story, he decided, might be a little much to expect from a sad leafy girl. He could work with that. "Hey, I grok it," he said, and held out a hand to her across the expanse between them. She ogled like he had frogs for fingers. "Listen, d'you wanna come with me?" She tilted her head at him. "I mean, it kinda seems like we're both lookin' for someone out here, right? And honestly, I'd feel really weird about leavin' a little kid out in the woods by herself." He rubbed the back of his head. "Sooo… d'you wanna walk with me for a while? I'll keep you safe and stuff. I mean, I'm not so good at situational awareness all the time, y'know? But I'll do my best."

Like clouds breaking, the little girl's face split suddenly into an earnest grin. "Come with you?" she asked, clasping her hands. She was heartbreakingly cute. "Really?"

"Yeah, dood," he said, and beckoned again with his hand. "We'll try to find your mom an' stuff, yeah?"

"Oh, thank you, Mister Soos!" she said, jumping straight to her feet. "Yes, yes! I want to come with you to find my momma!" Something shiny and black flashed underneath her skirt hem. For a second Soos thought she was wearing fancy shoes, but with another look, he saw the she had two little deer-feet, instead of normal people-feet. Shyly, she pushed her skirt down over her toes again. He thought she might be sensitive about it, so he decided not to comment.

She stepped forward and, finally, clasped his big hand in both of hers. "Can we go? I wanna go home." She did a little dance in place in her excitement.

"Hey, I like the enthusiasm!" He started to stand, but their outset was interrupted by rustling foliage from above, and a little cry from the girl as a fat walnut fell right smack on the crown of her skull. She let go of Soos's arm and clutched at her head with a frustrated scream. A commotion took up in the tree branches. His little squirrelbro was peeking through the leaves, and chickering angrily.

 _"Dood!"_ Soos admonished. The squirrel responded with another loud, mad sound, not directed at him. Soos followed its gaze to the little girl at his side, and was surprised to see her glaring back at it with much more intensity than a child should have been capable of. Another walnut fell, but she sidestepped it smoothly. Her face twisted and grew ugly.

She noticed him looking, though, and when she did, the glare melted. She put a hand back on her head and winced. "It hurts," she complained.

"Sorry, _niñita,"_ Soos said, and shot his own frown at the squirrel. It gave one more squawk and finally disappeared for good. "Pretty sure it was an accident. But hey, we got some more walnuts out of it, right?" He scooped them demonstratively off of the ground.

The little girl, seemingly absorbed in thought, took just a second to react to him, and then she giggled. "Yeah, I like walnuts!" Bashfully, she took his hand again. "You're nice, Mister Soos."

"Aw, I think you're nice too, kiddo." She enveloped his forearm in a brief clinging hug, and Soos was surprised to find his throat just a little choked. They took a few steps at her slow pace and he finally thought to say, "Hey, I shoulda asked. What's your name?"

She swung his arm with hers in a big arc that matched her smile. "Tree Roots!"

"Huh! That's a good name. So which way we goin', 'Roots?"

"I dunno!" She beamed. "I can't wait for you to meet my mommy, Mister Soos!"

"Me neither, dood!"

They talked for hours that morning, and their conversation was animated and absorbing enough that Soos never noticed the birds giving a large berth of silence to them wherever they walked.

–

Wendy stripped the last scrap of meat from the rabbit's leg with her teeth as the sun finally eclipsed the elm trunk to the northeast of the camp. She raised a greasy hand to shield her eyes. Light filtered through the smoky air, turning morning-yellow to dirty orange – new color for a new day. She belched and scooted herself leftways through the dirt until she was comfortably in shadow again, as Robbie mutely picked the last shards of bone from the soil on the far side of the fire and placed them reverently at the edges of the arrangement he had set up beneath a wild rose bush.

"The hell is it supposed to be?" she grunted.

He intoned, "It is a heart," digging a shallow moat in the dirt around the bones with his hands. His eyes were haunted.

"Doesn't look like a heart to me."

"An abstract representation of the heart that beats eternally in all of us," he reiterated, and pressed his clasped hands to his mouth, "to honor the creature that gave its life so we might go on." He brushed a tender hand along the bloody fur laid along the bottom of the bone array. Ironically for someone who had adopted such a funereal aesthetic for most of his life, Robbie, it turned out, had very few coping mechanisms for death. The first thing he'd done this morning when she came back from checking the traps was throw up at the sight of the little corpse dangling from her fist, and then he'd eaten ravenously, and then he'd gotten melancholy. The scattered ribs and vertebrae on the ground looked like someone had stepped on the logo for his first band in eighth grade. Wendy rolled her eyes so hard her head went with them, and snapped the bone in her hand into two pieces. She tossed half into Robbie's funeral pile and clenched the other's marrow-bleeding end between her teeth like a cigar, and stood up as he pressed his forehead into the earth. _"Goodnight, sweet prince."_

She stoked the low fire to bring up the embers and then straightened again, stretching to ease the sleep out of her back. The woods had gotten into her blood again lately, and she _loved it._ Five days ago, she'd been pissed about the idea of ruining her Halloween costume – a bureaucrat's ensemble, basically an ultra-frugal mosaic of her nicer interview outfits – but if she was being honest, she was totally owning it. She'd developed a handsome rip up the seam of her slinky black skirt, and her once-conservative white dress shirt looked way better when hanging wide open over her bra and tied off above her belly button. Her necktie was for keeping her hair out of her eyes now, Rambo-style. She looked _good._ With a swagger, she picked up her axe and slung it over her shoulder. It had taken her close to a week of experimentation to remember how to set traps properly, but they were finally starting to bear fruit. Or foot. Rabbit foot, that is. Ha. How had she forgotten how good outdoorswomanship felt?

"Alright," she announced, interrupting Robbie's Sanskrit incantation for release from rabbit-samsara. "It's dry enough for a fire, and we've eaten, and that already puts us in a better position than we've been in for the last two days. Today, we're taking advantage of that." She swung her axe into the tree in front of her, because it felt good.

"But what's the point," Robbie moaned, and buried his fingers in his hair, long since liberated from its man-bun by the very forces of nature itself, which found it an affront. "We're all just _meat,_ Wendy, don't you see? _Meat_ running around eating other _meat_ until there's no more _meat_ and we _die."_

She was not in the mood for this. "Today we are _marching,_ Robbie. Boot camp-style. We are taking advantage of the best position we've been in since Halloween night, and covering as much ground as Godly possible, do you understand?"

"Then we're _dead_ and the _meat_ turns into _dirt_. We're all just _dirt._ If we live through this, then what? We get to go back to the same endless circle of _meat_ and _dirt._ I c-cah… Aguhh…" He choked. She grimaced, pulled her axe back out of the tree, and jabbed him with the butt, not hard enough to render him more disabled, but enough to make him look up. His nose was snotty. She didn't care.

"Listen to me," she said, and squatted to his level, taking full advantage of the awesome slit in her skirt. With concentration, she could even make her voice something resembling level. "I know that, uh, you're having a hard time right now, okay, man? I _get_ hard times. Actually, I more than get them, because I'm the one doing all the real work here lately, you know? But listen to me. Listen." She shuffled sideways and draped an arm around his slumped shoulders. He sniffled. "I need something, Robbie. Can you do something for me?"

Uncertainly, he nodded.

"I need you," she said, and bopped him in the sternum again, "to get your shit together. Alright?" He blinked. "Yeah. That's what I need from you, Robbie. Were you expecting me to say I want you to always keep me in the loop about whatever crisis you're having that day? No. I need you to gather your shit, bundle it up – put it in a backpack, I don't know, and _keep it together."_ She stood up again, and the axe went right back over her shoulder. "We have literally days to go until we're even in the general _area_ of Gravity Falls, and I am not going to be slowed down by some trembly hippie moaning about me doing what I have to do so that we survive. My _family_ is waiting for me. You got that?" His mouth had opened slightly; she took it as a yes. She flipped the axe in the air, once, and turned away again.

He was lucky she liked his parents. The most compelling reason she'd come up with to continue preserving his life was that she _really_ didn't want to have to tell them about how she'd let their only son curl up and die in the woods.

A crow took up cawing in the treetops as she kicked mulch over the last remnants of the fire. Not for the first time, she wished bitterly that they had some kind of pan on hand. There was a stream not too far away from camp, and she'd have given Robbie's left arm to be able to boil water, but what was done was done. Rainwater had held them out for the last few days, and good sense would have to suffice from here on out. She stopped and stood in the morning sun for just a minute, arms akimbo and lungs full of fresh air. She was in control. This was all going to be okay.

Behind her, Robbie whispered, _"Whoooaa."_ She had just decided that it would be more effort than it was worth to tell him to shut up when she was surprised by a loud flutter and a sudden squawk. She turned around into the glare of the sun, and had to squint and move in order to identify the cause of the commotion. It took her a second to recognize the culprit as a crow, because the bird before her was snowy white and unusually large. It balanced on a swaying fir branch, and as its perch stopped moving it flared its wings into the light and made another loud sound. _"Kwaa, kwaaa!"_

Wendy frowned at it – "'Kay, weird," – but Robbie was already on his feet, looking more excited than she'd seen him in days.

"Whoooaa," he said again, and reached toward the crow with hesitant hands. "Wendy, babe, are you seeing this?"

"I'll take off a digit if you call me 'babe' again, Robbie."

"The crow," he said, eyes full of wonder. "The _crow_. A bird of a different feather! It's an _omen."_ He dropped slackjawed to his knees. "What does it _meeeean?"_

Wendy wasn't impressed. The crow blinked at her with its creepy sideways eyelids and squawked again. "Yeah, Robbie. Sure." She picked her backpack up, kicked it lightly to get the dirt off the bottom, and loaded herself back up again. "Well, I'll follow it any direction it goes, as long as that direction is east. Come on, loser." She dragged him forward by the wrist until he stumbled to his feet and fell into measure with her. The crow impassively watched them walk past, and then took off again. It soared to a branch a few yards ahead, and quorked once more, loudly. "Go away." Wendy waved the axe at it, but Robbie wrenched it down, looking shocked.

She fully expected the bird to leave before long, but where they walked, it followed, making noise almost incessantly. Robbie tracked it with wide, reverent eyes while Wendy did her best to ignore it, until at last it finally took off above their heads in the direction from whence they'd come. She relaxed with the certainty that the weird animal was finally gone, but jumped at the sound of another _"Kwaaaar!"_ from close behind and a sudden gust of cold air.

 _"Jesus!"_ she spat as the crow buzzed them. She messily swept back the hair from her face that the bird had sent flying. It settled, once again, in a tree before them, and let out a self-satisfied _skraw._ "What the hell is this bird's problem? What do you want?!"

"I think it… _wants_ something," said Robbie, who was not listening to her at all. The crow bobbed its head at the treetops and screeched, flapping its wings. "It wants us to… follow it? Join it?"

"It's twenty feet above the ground, Robbie," Wendy snapped, but the bird seemed to have latched onto Robbie's words. It hopped down a branch, and down again, and cried out.

"Is that what you need of us, Crow God?" Robbie asked, palms up. "You want us to visit your home in the heavenly treetops?"

Wendy griped, "Oh, for _God's_ sake," and shoved her backpack and axe into Robbie's arms. "Just give me your belt, Robbie."

"My… whuh?"

"Your _belt_. Give it to me." He dropped his armful of things in order to do what she asked. She tested the leather experimentally and decided it was going to be good enough. "Alright, I'm using your bonehead idea. I'm climbing that tree." She pointed to a slim fir. _"Not_ because a crow wants me to, so don't feel satisfied. I'm doing it because it'll show me how close we're getting to the mountain. _You_ are going to stay down here, because I'm pretty sure you'll die if I let you take both feet off the ground at the same time." Despite the insult, he didn't seem inclined to argue about who was getting the privilege of climbing the hundred-foot tree.

As many things as she remembered from her Junior Lumberjack days, retaining the ability to actually _do_ those things hadn't been high on her priority list these last five years. Robbie's belt, slung around the tree trunk, worked well enough as a brace with which to make it up the first ten feet, but her arms were already getting tired by that point. Fortunately, ten feet brought the lowest branches within her reach, and she hoisted herself up into the thick of them. It was less difficult than supporting her entire weight on a leather belt, but still pretty difficult. Shadows were spotty close to the trunk, and the branches were thin and dense, a vertical maze of small brittle twigs and sharp pinecones. They snagged her shirt, but that was okay. She'd only come out of this looking more awesome.

At twenty-five, then fifty feet, she stopped to catch her breath and rub her raw knees. Robbie was pleasingly small and distant from up here, slumped next to a nursery tree and drumming out a little tattoo on the trunk with his hands, but her vantage was mostly an expanse of pin-straight trunks swept by drooping green branches, until they faded with distance into shadow or sun. The light seemed to get thicker the further up she traveled, distilled by an atmosphere floating with dust and water vapor and the smallest bit of smoke they'd left behind.

Wings flapped; boughs bent. _"Waaak!"_ Wendy looked up to see the white crow peeking through the foliage.

"Yeah, yeah, you're getting what you want. Don't rub it in," she said. The crow just blinked sideways at her and watched her continue upward.

Somewhere near the top, she pushed her scratched and sappy upper body from the ever-thinning branches. She had not quite cleared the treetops, but the view of the sky from here was much bigger than she'd been able to see for days. Evergreen down carpeted the sloping hillsides in all directions, interrupted here and there by a bright flare of deciduous color. There was no sign of the mountain peak from here, but maybe their elevation was just too low. On the southern horizon rose a foreign shape, a brown mass barely visible past the swaying trees. She pushed herself a little further, and at the highest point in the tree that could still support her weight, she pulled up once more, and her hand fell limply at her side when she looked out southward again.

Cliffs. Two high, curving cliffs, sharp against the blue-gray sky, with a precarious crack running along their lengths halfway down, all nestled within the ridge of a grand verdant hill. She raised a disbelieving hand to shield her eyes from the sun that glared off of the clouds. If she squinted, she could almost see the thin, broken rail line running between their symmetrical tips, where she'd smoked her first cigarette and used to set off firecrackers with Nate and Lee. Just the sight of it was enough to put in mind the scents of cedar and car exhaust and Greasy's pancakes. There was _home._

Nevermind that it was completely impossible that it could be here, of course, because Gravity Falls stood in the shadow of the mountain, and there was no mountain to be seen anywhere nearby, and aside from that they had literally _dozens_ of miles left to go before they even fully left the valley. Yet there the cliffs stood nonetheless, solid and real as could be beyond the unbroken miles of green treetops, familiar as home and shockingly close.

Wendy caught movement out of the corner of her eye and turned. The white crow clutched at a branch a yard from her elbow, saying nothing for once. The wind trailed her hair across her face. She pursed her lips. "Did you plan this?" She didn't like this feeling that something with a beak could be smiling at her. "What's your endgame, bird?"

The crow cocked its head at her and then squawked a squawk that sounded an awful lot like _"Win."_

Robbie's voice was starting to drift up from the ground, though between the wind and the creaking trees, she couldn't understand what he was saying. Wendy cast back one more time to the cliffs looming in the near distance, twin aberrations tempered by all her memories of a, frankly, really long and weird childhood. She frowned. As if this week hadn't been stupid enough already.

She started down the tree again, moving backward, but a little less carefully than she had been going up. Her pounding heart weakened her grip on the branches.

Today, they were marching double-time.

–

Six days. Six days in this godforsaken shack, and where did that leave Pacifica?

Done. That's where. Absolutely, completely done.

The small tower of crates beneath her feet shifted dangerously as she made a first cautious attempt to rise from a crouch atop it, and she dropped back down again with a gasp. The movement of her claptrap stepstool came to a rest when she froze, and she took a second to be sure it wasn't going to collapse before trying once again to rise, with trembling legs. She just needed to be quick enough to reach out and –

She hurled her weight forward and her finger miraculously caught the butt of the rifle that peeked over the top of the highest shelf. The gun slid outward, tipped from the shelf, and fell, not into her grasp as she'd hoped, but down to the floor with a heart-stopping clatter. In paranoid anticipation of a shot, Pacifica jumped, put her heel off the edge of the crate, flailed, failed, and with a swoop and crash of her own found herself sore-assed on the wooden floor with her hand in a tangled coil of rope and a scrape on her thigh where a box-corner had dug in.

Her brain thudded while she reoriented herself. She complained to no one, _"Fuuck,"_ took a second to cradle her forehead, and dutifully stood again and limped over to where the rifle had fallen. She checked the clip. Empty, as expected. She sniffed and slung it over her shoulder, and then sneezed. Her fall had kicked up a lot of dust. Its coagulation in the air made the triangular window in the far wall seem to glow.

For being the part of the Shack she was probably most familiar with, it had taken her a long time after arriving to feel comfortable enough to venture into the attic room. Two mattresses sat on either side of the window, one draped in a bleached pink duvet, the other bare and sagging in the middle; she kicked sullenly at the rumpled rag-mat on the floor between them. For two years, she'd interspersed her well-clipped and leather-bound New England high school terms with sunlit summer weeks spent, largely, in this very room. It kept Pacifica away from home – the ostensible objective to all the time that she and Mabel spent together from age thirteen onward – and in pursuit of that she'd never really cared what direction the hours took otherwise. Browsing websites with sassy pastel-edged columns about _What Guys REALLY Want!_ ; trying to determine whether the grassy-looking woman they'd found at the edge of a pond the day before had been a dryad or a naiad; spreading scrapbooking supplies over Dipper's bed without acknowledging the weight of its empty surface; draping themselves across the floor in the swimming heat between the uninsulated walls and watching public television on a vacuum-tube set twice as old as they were. It still sat at the end of the bed, gray with dust and the sun that cut in through the window every morning.

Memories grow tender over time, but more in the way of bruises than sentiment; there was a reason she'd avoided coming up here for so long. She still had the feeling that it could rouse some ghost. They'd first held hands in this room, if you could call it that, a manicure examination which somehow grew and became yielding and lived on the floor between them for nearly ten minutes. On sleepover nights, Candy and Grenda changed into their pajamas in the middle of the room as casual as anyone, but Pacifica always had to duck around the corner from Mabel out of fear of what she might see. And then on that August evening that she finally had the Big Blowout with her parents and left her home with gravel flying behind her convertible, she'd shown up on the Shack's doorstep with raccoon-eyes and been swept straight upstairs into the moonlight of a first kiss, outlined by the three sides of that east-facing window and Mabel's heartbreakingly earnest promise that _you did nothing wrong._

They were sixteen, then. Mabel hadn't spent another full summer in Gravity Falls after that – she said the following year that she had an eight-week fashion design course under her belt in June and July, but Pacifica suspected that Dipper had finally put his foot down on Mabel's openness to seeing Stan when he was still so angry at their uncle. In between brief and irregular interludes at one another's homes and schools, though, the girls had still kept each other close at hand ever since: two reciprocal phone numbers lived perpetually under one another's "recent contacts" headings. Even six godforsaken days into this ordeal, Mabel's number still sat there, sixty-eight failed calls logged on a phone kept alive by way of potato battery. Pacifica didn't really believe anymore that she would be successful, but the tiny adrenaline high that spiked each time she tried was something worth chasing.

As of two nights ago, couch-induced sleeplessness had finally left Pacifica desperate enough to curl up on Mabel's once-bed. Both it and its twin were dust-bogged to the point of being hard to breathe near, but it wasn't the dust, that night, that had stopped Pacifica from being able to sleep in the attic. It was the scent: peanut butter and craft glue, thick as a hand-knit sweater in the bedsheets and pillow. She'd lain awake and stared at the ceiling; the shadows in here were sharp and the air was cold. Here, as she'd feared, was the specter she'd wanted to let lie. She was deeply, horrifically lonely. When she found tears welling heavy in her eyes, she finally threw back the comforter and stormed back downstairs. Shit sleep was still better than this torture.

That was the night she'd decided she really was done. She couldn't stay here any longer, eating canned meat and writing increasingly-crazed notations about her feelings (her therapist had probably not intended for this activity to be performed to the exclusion of all others). When contacting the outside world failed, when the vending machine refused to move, when the view from the roof revealed nothing and no one but quiet dark trees and the rain fell heavy for two days straight, she'd lost all direction, retreated into a cave of fearful rumination. Now, she was still afraid, but at least her resolve to leave meant she finally had a _goal_ again.

And that, of course, was why she needed the gun.

Stan had let the Shack go badly since Mabel stopped coming around, but sorting through the mess, Pacifica told herself, was exactly the sort of project she needed. In the last eighteen hours, she'd compiled a backpack full of the sorts of things Dipper would have packed if he were in her shoes, probably – canteens and lighters and tin cups and a blanket that seemed itchy enough to be made of wool, because that was important for some reason she didn't remember. She'd found a strung longbow displayed on a wall and some arrows under the kitchen sink – God knew why – and proceeded to hurt the hell out of her fingers practicing shooting it at the couch; her previous experience with archery had used a compound, but this was some _Dances With Wolves_ shit. Within an hour she felt positively disabled.

Firearms, she'd decided, were a safer bet anyway. At some point, Stan had taken the cursory safety measure of placing all his guns in high places, in deference to the minors in his home, but seemed not to own a single ladder with which to retrieve them. That was how Pacifica found herself endangering her life in order to retrieve the rifle off of its shelf on the back attic wall. She'd been successful, though. She was succeeding and she was going to win and she was going to _survive._ A Northwest never quits, after all.

She was ready to leave with the rifle when a deep rumble left her frozen in place. The floorboards seemed to ripple beneath her feet and her scalp tickled. She'd come to recognize the warning signs very well in the last few days, and knew what was coming, but in fumbling the gun moved just a little too slowly. She swiped at the shelves on the back wall, but not in time before she found her feet lifting slowly from the floor, along with the boxes she'd scattered and the duvet on Mabel's bed. "Shit, shit, shit…!" No matter how many times she went through this, she hated not to have an anchor. She hugged the rifle to her chest and curled in on herself while she waited for the end of the anomaly; her hair drifted around her chin and her stomach turned somersaults, like she was trapped in a roller coaster's loop. Everything always turned very quiet when the weight went away, as if the world were suspended in viscous, anechoic fluid. Instinctually, she held her breath. In a few seconds, she found herself at chin-height with the shelf she'd put in so much effort to reach before, and felt a pang of annoyance.

Then, abruptly and unceremoniously, gravitational law remembered itself again, as it always did, and she collapsed back to the floor with everything else in the room. She caught herself on a hand and two knees. Didn't even drop the rifle. She'd gotten good at sticking the landing; no new bruises from that in a few days now.

Pacifica found her feet unsteadily. The gravitational shifts were becoming more frequent, and shorter; this was the third just since she'd woken this morning. It left her nervous, like would the heightening cadence of a time bomb. Little matter. She was leaving tomorrow; the last pieces were falling into place.

Pacifica didn't cast another look back at the room before fleeing downstairs. Remembrance hadn't caused her anything but pain lately.

Back in the gift shop, she deposited the rifle on the sale counter and surveyed her stash. The Dipper-inspired survival backpack, stuffed taut with good ideas; her inventory of canned goods, laid out on top of and around a dilapidated octo-llama display; a canvas munitions bag found in the TV cabinet, heavy with rounds of all shapes and sizes. She didn't know which sorts of guns they all went into and wasn't sure how she was going to carry it, but she was doing her best, dammit. And a dime bag pulled out from the crack of an armchair, of course. It had proven precious the last few days.

Pacifica was trying to remember where she'd put her chapstick when, unpleasantly, the house started to shake again. She leapt instinctually toward the wall and grabbed onto a coat hook. Two in as many minutes? Wood debris tumbled from the ceiling as the floor vibrated and the beams creaked. Her canned goods clattered and went rolling. "C'mon!" she barked at the world at large. "What the hell is going on?!"

But the fall away from the floor never came. The shaking continued, and deepened, and then slowed again and the house settled relievedly back on its foundations. Pacifica waited for a second, sure that another shoe was about to drop, and finally stepped away from with wall with caution and disbelief that she'd managed to avoid the unpleasantry of –

 _KRRRRRRGGGGHHHKKK_

A sharp and ugly grinding noise cracked against her eardrums, and she jumped in fear yet again. She thought for a second that something in the Shack had finally given way after being bounced up and down for so many days, and placed her hands above her head.

Something moved out of the corner of her eye. She stood stock-still.

The vending machine's buttons were lighting up, the glow in the crack behind it growing brighter than she could remember it being in days. With a rolling groan, the heavy machine chunked and jumped and then shifted abruptly to the side, dropping candy from its spirals and blinking lights like sleepy eyes. A sheet of cold air puffed against her face, and Pacifica stepped backward in shock. The lights in the hallway behind the machine put a sick yellow glow on the pale figure beneath them, but when the person stepped out into the natural light of the shop, he looked no healthier. Square glasses glinted atop a veiny red nose and –

"O-oh my God," Pacifica stuttered, stumbling back and reestablishing her grasp on the coat hook, just in case. "St–" Her throat was unexpectedly gummy. She coughed.

"…Stan?"

Stan's eyes were deadened, his gait shuffling and slow. His eyes flicked up at her and registered some level of surprise, but surprise pulled rotting from a deep well: "'Cif'ca?" He grunted her name in two syllables.

Pacifica was at a loss for words. Stan. Oh, God, Stan. How long had it been since Pacifica saw him last? He was no longer the obnoxiously charismatic man he'd once been, but that had been true for years now. Pacifica had seen him semi-frequently during her summers in the Shack; he'd already started keeping mostly to himself by then, seeming a little quieter, a little smaller – no longer the Man of Mystery by any measure, but he'd seemed relatively okay, all things considered, and he'd always been at least somewhat engaged in Mabel's day-to-day life during her visits. He was even mostly welcoming to Pacifica.

Conversely, the man before her now looked half in the grave. His stained t-shirt hung off of him like a dead sail, his broad frame slumped and hollow. He struggled to focus on her for a second, and then just closed his eyes briefly and started shuffling toward the door that lead into the shack proper, like he simply couldn't muster the energy to respond. He carried an empty, brown-speckled mug in his right hand, like he was just making a trip to the coffee machine on a Saturday morning, normal as could be.

Pacifica watched him go with jaw slack. Nearly a week in isolation and this comprised her first interaction with another human being.

What could she possibly say to that?

Oh, wait.

 _"And where in the FUCK have you been!"_ The non-question ripped out of her throat so harshly that it surprised even her. Stan stopped, but didn't turn around. "What the hell? What the hell? What the hell were you thinking?! You were down there this whole time? Do you have any _idea_ how long I tried to get in?!" When she first started yelling, her emphasis came more out of shock than true anger, but the longer she carried on for, the better she felt the fury. "It's been _six goddamned days,_ Pines! I thought I was the last person alive in this whole _shit_ world. What were you doing down there? Playing, like, king of – king of the bunker? Or something?" In profile, she could see him blink. She stamped her foot. "Oh, stop looking so sorry for yourself and talk to me! What the hell have you been doing for almost a week? What kept you down there so long? _Tell me!"_ He still didn't turn around. "What have you _done?!"_

The second she took a break from yelling, she felt a pang of regret: she'd gone all out too soon, and blown her voice. If she coughed, she'd risk yielding her anger, though, so she sucked it up and glared instead. Still, Stanley wasn't moving. His shoulders rose, and slowly fell again.

Pacifica waited. She waited exactly as long as it seemed would be appropriate for a pregnant pause in a movie, and opened her mouth with contempt on her tongue just in time to be interrupted. Stan's voice was creaky and weak, that of a man much older than even himself:

"I screwed up," he whispered, with the tone of a man who's mostly talking to himself. "I, uh – I screwed up bad, 'Cif." Even as he spoke, Pacifica found her feelings deflating. He sounded like a man on the edge.

She took a brief second to compose herself, but again, he spoke up before she could. "I – _hem,"_ he coughed, and finally turned around, running a hand through his thinning hair. "I'm, uh, sorry, y'know? I didn't know you were up here. I thought I –" He stopped for a second, gaze locked on the wall. "I thought everyone was gone."

Hers was an unhappy balance between pity and righteous fury. She swallowed and finally croaked, "So did I."

For the first time since stepping out from behind the vending machine, Stan looked up at her. The bags under his eyes were gray and dead. "You haven't seen or heard from anyone, then? Not the – the kids, or…?" She shook her head. He rocked his head slightly in a resigned nod and his gaze drifted away from her again. Pacifica stood lip-locked and white-knuckled. Ever so slightly, the Shack rattled and groaned, and then stopped again.

"But you're here," Stan finally said, still staring off into nothing. "You're here." He blinked flusteredly. She crossed her arms. "And if _you_ survived, there's no way the twins didn't… didn't…"

"What does that mean, if _I_ survived?" she snapped, but Stan just shook his head. He straightened up, only a little, and ran his hands through his hair again. The coffee mug dropped from his curled finger and it hit the softwood floor with a mute thump. Pacifica watched it roll until it came to a stop on its own handle. "Ugh. So did you just go crazy down there, or –?"

"Absolutely," he said without hesitation. Slowly, animation was returning to him. His eyes were brighter. He took a few sloping steps with a hand on his chin. "Absolutely. Yeah. But that doesn't mean I can't –" He stopped.

He sighed.

"C'mon, Northwest," said gruffly. Pacifica raised an eyebrow at him. "I gotta… Just come with me. I gotta show you something." He started shuffling back toward the vending machine entryway, but she raised her hands.

"Whoa, okay, hold up. What's down there?"

"Time machine," he grunted. "C'mon."

"Ho, wait, what?" She gestured at him for clarification, but he seemed to think this all very self-explanatory. "Aaand what exactly do you need me down there for?"

Stan paused at the threshold, one hand on the side of the snack machine. He let out a small, dark chuckle. "Same thing Catholics need priests for, I guess." His voice was deathly dry. "Confessional? Isn't that what they call it?" He shrugged and started walking. "Betcha you don't want to stay up here by yourself either way."

There was never really any chance Pacifica was going to refuse, but she didn't want to look like a soft touch either. She pursed her lips and waited another perfect television moment before finally following Stan cautiously into the sodium-yellow hallway behind the wall.

–

 **Honestly I'm hardly ever on Tumblr anymore but you can still be on the front lines to see my miraculous comeback someday by following me at whiggitymacabee. tumblr. com**


	12. Something That Should Be There

**This is where I usually drop humorously self-depricating excuses for the gap in posting, but considering that since this story's last update I have packed up my entire life, quit my job, gotten rid of most everything I own, and moved from Portland, Oregon to Portland, Maine with my fiance and cat, I feel a little more justified this time for not keeping up with writing.**

 **Also, I wanted to take a minute to write out a full response to anon reviewer Logan Neal, who expressed skepticism regarding Mabel's (bi)sexuality in this fic. For what it's worth, I find Mabel pretty darn easy to characterize as bi. I mean, just look at the girl - she feels so much love for everyone around her that I can't see something as small as gender being a stumbling block for her after she hits puberty.**

 **Sexuality headcanons are also very lame though, and I don't want to linger on that. The _functional_ reason for Mabel's bisexuality is to create an emotional link for Pacifica, who would otherwise have no strong connections to any of the main characters and would have to exist as an island unto herself, which would give me very little to work with as far as her characterization and emotional arc are concerned. She was, in fact, originally going to be Dipper's romantic interest (notice that in Pacifica's first appearance, her beau was referred to only as Em, because I hadn't made up my mind which twin it would be yet [Mabel/Mason]), but I realized early on that this was logistically improbable considering Dipper, in this story, has declined to return to Gravity Falls since 2012. So Mabel was given the honor instead. ****(I have no idea if anons ever actually come back but I wanted to make sure this comment got a response because I was kind of waiting for someone to claim that "Mabel doesn't like girls!")**

12

What a beautiful day.

Beatrice took a wide step up to the edge of the root-mangled embankment and struck a pose, breathing deep and determined like an old sea captain on a red-sky morning. The air was tart and still, and fogged lightly by vapor lifted in the stems of morning sunlight that lay between the endless columns of trees, as golden as grain felled at the end of summer. She had a buzz in her head and heart, an elated, winey feeling, and turned to look past her shoulder with a smirk.

"C'mon, slowpokes!" she called to her straggling compatriots trudging slowly up the incline behind her. "We gonna get to Gravity Falls sometime this year or not?" Dipper rubbed his face with cupped hands as he approached her from behind.

"You're perky this morning."

That was actually true, maybe for the first time in her life. After only a couple of days on a bad leg, Beatrice had already forgotten what it was like to feel this well, and she was positively marinating in her own good health. There really was something to be said for witches' magic, it seemed – Beatrice had promised herself a dozen times over the years that she was done forever with curses and spells and secret dealings, but credit where credit was due: something in the Mother of Tree Roots' home had worked wonders on her. Gone were her fever, and pain, and the weakness in her grip. She walked ahead of or fell behind the others whenever she wanted; she caressed her trusty bat with the knowledge she could finally put the force into its swing that it deserved again; she jumped over a lot of stuff, just because she could. It wasn't her fault that that the witch's voodoo had passed over the others for whatever reason. Honestly, everyone else kind of looked like shit today. Beatrice regarded Dipper smugly. She couldn't even be angry about the rude awakening he'd given her anymore. "The sun is shining, the birds are singing, and we've got _places to be!"_ She thumped him on the shoulder with great camaraderie and made him wince. "Isn't that right, Wirt?"

Wirt's face was just barely eclipsed from the hill behind them, walking next to Sara and a little ahead of Mabel and Greg. His eyes snapped up to focus when he heard his name. "Um. What?"

"It's a beautiful day and we're gonna _kick its ass!_ Are you with me?"

"I think…" He really did seem to need to think about it. The poor boy was desperately unfocused. She wondered why. "Yeah?"

"And Wirt agrees with me," Beatrice repeated to Dipper, setting a casual elbow on Wirt's shoulder as he and Sara finally topped the hill. Wirt stumbled a little under her weight, and Dipper rolled his eyes, but Beatrice used this brief moment of closeness to sneak a glance at the young man past her arm. His eyes drifted listlessly along the ground, and he looked sallower than yesterday. Didn't he? She'd been pretty wrapped up in her own problems then.

In line with her newfound empathetic awareness, Beatrice also realized that she was acting awfully familiar with Wirt while Sara stood just a few feet away, and sheepishly, she took her arm back. If Sara was perturbed, she didn't show it. She looked pretty distracted herself.

Dipper slung his backpack off and asked if anybody else was hungry, as Mabel finally came puffing up the hill in dead last place, with Greg riding happily piggy-back. He seemed to be finishing up a story, while she bowed and gasped for air.

"…and I dropped the pole in the water! And Dad had to walk into the lake to get it. But then!" He threw his hands up in the air. "When he tried to give me the pole, there was a fish on it! And I reeeeeled it all the way in. I caught a tuna!"

Mabel was short of breath and sweaty, but in awe. "Whoooa!"

"It was a trout," Wirt said, and hoisted Greg off of her shoulders. She slumped thankfully.

"You didn't see my fish!" Greg protested. "You didn't come fishing."

"I ate it for dinner that night. Tuna are like the size of trucks. Do you want an apple?"

"A _tuna-size_ apple!" Dipper only had a fist-size apple to offer, but Greg seemed sufficiently happy with that. Beatrice plopped herself down in the dirt next to Mabel and grabbed a carrot and a handful of dried cranberries. She leaned backward against a jutting, mossy stone and craned up at the treetops, cracking the vegetable between her teeth with great satisfaction. Starburst sunlight filtered white through the boughs above, sloped like the bared ribs of a cathedral nave. She closed her eyes and relaxed her neck. With an audible flutter, a small bird – by accent, maybe a goldfinch – landed on a limb a few feet away and sang happily about the worms dangling from its beak, simple-minded in its joy. She couldn't help smiling.

Someone shuffled up next to her and sat carefully down. A small hand touched hers. "What's he saying?" Greg asked around a mouthful of apple.

"Mmm." She sniffed and flung an arm over her eyes. "He found some worms and he wants everybody to know about it." The bird chirped again and flapped away. "Now he's going to go share them with his wife. His, um, bird-wife."

"Aw!" She peeked under her arm and saw Greg tapping his feet together happily. "He's a good bird-groom." He was, wasn't he? Birds were so full of humanity. She didn't give them enough credit. "Hey Beatrice?"

"Yeah?"

"Can you run?"

That got her attention. She dropped the last bite of carrot in her mouth and squinted at Greg with exaggerated disbelief. "Can I run?" She leapt to her feet. "Can I run?!" She lifted her once-injured leg illustratively, and then spun on her heel and kicked a tree. _"Hiyah!"_ It was a very big tree, and didn't move much, but she felt like she'd made her point. "You askin' _me_ if I can _run?"_

"Hooray!" Greg cried, jumping up in the air as Mabel sat up straight next to them. He placed his apple core carefully on the ground. "Race me to the bottom!" And without so much as a countdown, he began bounding down the slope, slipping a little in the pine needles and holding his saucepan on his head. Wirt and Sara scarcely had time to make sounds of caution.

"Hey!" Beatrice said, but Mabel was more intimately familiar with the behavior patterns of the perpetually optimistic and energetic, and she stood with a cackle. "Haha! You just gonna let him win like that?!" she cried, and started after him, whooping. Beatrice hollered and took up the rear.

It was more slick than she'd expected, given how dry the ground seemed. Pine needles and cedar leaves were treacherous things. The more she gave herself over to gravity's pull, though, the easier the going. Her view of Mabel's back jolted roughly up and down, warped lightly by the water in her eyes. She caught pretty significant air with each long bound down the slope. Before her, a root lumped up from the ground, and she was in perfect stride to land atop it and leap mightily forward with a happy scream in her throat. For just a second, she was weightless, airborne, arms outstretched on a cushion of air, like a bird – and then her feet hit the ground again where it began to level out, and she yelled again to express her exhilaration. Slowing took several yards and then she skidded to a stop a little ways behind Greg, who had fumbled a landing of his own and now lay giggling on his back. Mabel stumbled up last.

"Aw, man!" she panted, "Greg won the race! How could this happen?"

"He's a speed machine!" Beatrice held out a hand for the boy to grab and helped him back to his feet. He was still laughing infectiously, and Beatrice started laughing too.

"Is he alright?" Wirt's voice echoed from the edge of the embankment, his body language radiating alarm. The angle of the slope looked much steeper from the bottom. They were actually pretty lucky to not have turned any ankles, but Beatrice didn't Wirt to know that. She waved his concerns away.

"You nerds ever coming?!" Mabel shouted. "We're gonna leave without you!"

"You are not," Dipper called back, but he repacked his bag anyway and did as she bade.

Beatrice waited anxiously for everyone to reconvene; Greg went running to hug his brother as he came sliding down the slope, mostly on his rear. "Alright," Beatrice announced when the last of them had finally made it to the bottom of the gulley, "Let's march!" And she grabbed her bat from the loop on Dipper's backpack and swung it proudly over her shoulder to show her companions and the world at large that she was ready for anything.

Walking was so easy! She kept having the same thought, but it was true. Up and down gulches and swales, across tiny trickling streams, through knee-deep seas of horsetail ferns, she was sure-footed and strong. They'd had to abandon the train tracks earlier that morning when the ground turned rocky and pitted and the permanent way rose up away from it on crumbling stilts, but it stayed within sight on their right side, like the skeleton of a great snake threaded between the trees. Mabel kept pace with her and positively sparkled with conversation, and to Beatrice's own surprise, she didn't mind it at all. Mabel could actually be really funny. She possessed an overpowering magnetism that contrasted sharply with her brother's (and, honestly, Beatrice's) more sullen disposition, and Beatrice had never appreciated it enough before. The time passed quicker with good conversation.

Beatrice was so absorbed, in fact, that it took a while to notice that Sara was tailing them, her pace too much in line with theirs to be coincidence, but her distance clearly communicating some level of apprehension. Beatrice spied her behind them and was immediately caught by curiosity. Mabel seemed not to have noticed.

"…which Pacifica insisted she was _not_ going to do, so I said, 'Fine, then I'll do it,' which, I mean, yeah, the goblin had said clearly that the prophecy called for a maiden with _golden hair_ and I didn't meet any of the requirements, but we needed the Goblin Key to open the –!" Mabel cut her story off when she saw Beatrice jerk her head backward. She followed the gesture with her eyes, saw Sara, and lit up.

"Hey!" Mabel called back. "What's up?"

Sara slowed down and turned instantly red when it became clear they'd noticed her. "Oh, nothing. I'm just –"

"C'mon up!" Mabel stopped and extended an arm backward to capture the other girl in her trajectory, and pulled her forward to continue walking as a threesome ahead of the boys. "We haven't really seen each other today! Ol' Trixie's been talking my head off up here."

Beatrice asked, "What did you just call me?"

"I'm okay," Sara said. The assertion was unbidden and unconvincing. She kept rubbing her hands together, glancing upward like she was about to say something and then losing her nerve. Normally Beatrice would have been content to let someone stew in their own anxiety if they were going to lie about it, but she was feeling very charitable today. She reached over and put a supportive hand on Sara's shoulder. The other girl stiffened and looked to her.

"Pretty sure you're lying," Beatrice said. She meant it kindly but it came out accusatory, so she overcorrected with, "I mean – only because I know that you don't normally slink around behind people acting suspicious and… avoiding eye contact…" It occurred to her for the first time that her newfound self-possession might not be translating into true charisma.

Sara looked flustered. "Is it that obvious?"

"What's eating you?" Mabel hooked Sara's arm in her own and squeezed lightly. Sara mumbled something from behind a curtain of her hair. "What was that?"

Her redness intensified. "I don't know." She tucked her hair back behind her ear, abashed. "I started thinking about something that I can't get out of my head and – I thought maybe you knew…" She trailed off. It seemed like she needed a moment to recompose herself, but she lost her nerve and didn't start up again. Beatrice raised an eyebrow at Mabel over Sara's head. The other girl gave a tiny shrug.

They walked in silence for a couple of minutes, three pairs of feet shuffling across the sunny, mossy ground in offbeat syncopation. From a few dozen yards behind, Greg's voice drifted; he was regaling Wirt and Dipper with tales beyond imagining, surely. The air smelled leafstrewn-sweet.

"I had a really _weird_ dream last night." Beatrice was almost startled to hear Sara speak again. She sounded choked. "It was weird and bad and it just gave me this idea that I can't get rid of –" She took up her hair in fistfuls and then dropped them again. _Bad dreams._ Something stirred in Beatrice's memory – a warm hand, an evil look. She felt a chill. She'd forgotten she'd dreamed anything at all before now. "Do you know… do either of you guys know anything about magic?"

Beatrice tried to conceal her sudden discomfit. "Magic sucks," she announced bluntly, and swung her bat at a bed of ferns. They sprayed her with dew.

"That's… hm." Mabel was more circumspect. "Kinda. Dipper knows more than I do. He's the theory guy between us. You'd probably want to ask him"

"Yeah." Sara was back to rubbing her hands. "It's just… it's not something I really want to talk to Dipper about."

"I still don't know what's going on," Beatrice said, very conscious that she was slipping back into irritable dispassion.

Sara fretted, "I'm sorry. It's been bothering me for days now." She closed her eyes briefly, bracingly, and blurted, "I don't know why I ended up here with the rest of you and it's making me feel –"

"Wait, whaaat?" Mabel gave her a playfully confused nudge, but Sara didn't seem to find it funny.

"Well, think about it!" Sara put out her hands before her, demonstratively. "Mabel, you and Dipper, you – you fought demons when you were just kids. You've cast spells and caught monsters and – it's like what the goat said about people who've known… _darkness?_ You're here for a reason." She looked apologetic for the phrasing, but ploughed onward. "Greg and Wirt have come in and out of the Unknown and dealt with the Edelwood and the Beast before. You –" she swung her outstretched arm in Beatrice's direction "– you're _from_ the Unknown! There's all these connections for everyone except – except me." She drew up her shoulders with energy, then released it and let her arms drop. "And it's something I realized days ago and it's been making me feel crazy."

"Oh my gosh." Mabel took her around the shoulders with deep sympathy. "Oh my gosh, Sara, you are _so important_ and _inspiring_ and – don't think for a second that you aren't the best thing that's happened since we got here –"

Sara's miserable expression cracked into a smile for just a second, but she shook it away. "You're really sweet," she croaked, and hunched her back with appreciation, "but that's not an answer."

Beatrice grunted, "Why's it matter?"

"Because I don't like not being able to understand things," Sara murmured. "But then last night I had this dream, I told you, and it gave me this idea that –" She breathed deep, shaky. "I think that I might have ended up here because…" The words seemed to choke her. "Because of Wirt. Because I know Wirt."

A branch snapped beneath Beatrice's foot, broken with the tension in the air. That was not the reason she'd been expecting. Mabel seemed to feel the same. "Is that… bad?" she asked.

"No, but like –" Sara struggled to explain. "I _know_ him. I _knew_ him." And she intertwined her hands and squeezed them so tight her dark skin turned pale, and looked up to both girls with an expression that begged understanding.

But Beatrice did not understand, not until Mabel's eyes went wide and she said, _"Ohhh,"_ and then Beatrice felt comprehension settle like a yoke across her neck. Sara looked miserable, and Beatrice was thoroughly wrong-footed. A wellspring of resentment surfaced unexpectedly in her stomach, vomitous and vile, and she fought back the feeling of it with great effort. She'd already known about this; it had been funny to joke about last night. Why did Sara's mention of it make her feel dizzy now? From out of her forgotten dream, a ghostly hand walked up her hip, and she erupted in goosebumps.

Mabel was, fortunately, there to fill in Beatrice's conspicuous silence. "That's… I dunno, Sara…"

"But it's the only thing!" Sara almost shouted it, then dropped her voice and glanced back at the boys to see if they'd noticed. "It's the _only thing_ ," she hissed again. "The only thing that makes me any different from any other – any other dumb broad in the world who never had anything special happen to her –"

"Hey, hey!" Mabel's scold was marbled with concern. "Don't you talk about yourself that way for a second –!"

But Sara was rambling and had too much momentum to stop. "– and when I realized that that might be the answer I thought – it all makes sense! And it's – it's kind of _humiliating,_ but I needed to know, and I thought maybe if there's some kind of, of magic that connects all of you to this place then maybe there's magic keeping him and me together too and I don't want anyone to know about it but I have to ask because I just _need to understand –_ " Tears were welling in her eyes and she scrubbed angrily at her face. "I need to know if I'm really the girl who – who lived through the end of the world because she slept with her high school boyfriend. There. I said it." And she threw her head back, fixating with determination on the treetops and sniffing as quietly as possible.

All throughout Sara's outburst, the girls' walking had slowed, and Beatrice noticed dully that the boys were drawing dangerously close behind them. Absent-minded, she tugged on Mabel's sweater to speed her up. The other girl wrapped a comforting arm around Sara's shoulder and did so. Sara hardly seemed to notice.

The forest, suddenly, seemed more gray and cold than it had all morning. Beatrice was awash in her own roiling emotions, clinging to the unfelt truth that she did not have reason to be perturbed. The urge to turn back and stare at Wirt was overwhelming, but even she had enough tact to know better, so she found herself inundated with mental pictures of him instead. Brown eyes. Knobby hands. Big, stupid-looking nose – was she blushing? Her face felt hot.

She was not, she told herself, jealous of Sara. Not in the least. That would be idiotic. Maybe… just of the notion of being able to be so close to someone, anyone, at all. Beatrice had never had a boyfriend. Beatrice had rarely even had regular friends. Not before now, anyway. Oh Lord, now she had a lump in her throat. She wanted to punch herself in the face to straighten out her head.

The miserable memory surfaced in her mind – snowlit woods, a roadside clearing, and Wirt standing over her, short and young, with Greg on his back and a pair of scissors in his hands. She'd spread her wings along the ground and tried not to quake, as he crouched in the snow before her, looking scared to death. His hands shook – but she'd trusted him. Not just because she had to. Their trust was earned and earnest. As he fitted her bones between the blades, she'd thought to herself that she might never have such an intimate moment with anyone ever again – a dumb, pushover, gawky fifteen-year-old boy, who was going to leave and go grow up without her. Wasn't that sad? The swell in her throat was ready to choke her.

And then, through the self-indulgent dolor in her mind burst a brilliant ray of thought. _Hey, dummy. Does this remind you of anything?_

And actually, it did. Beatrice pulled herself out of her head and turned to Sara, dumbstruck. This was the answer to a question she'd never even thought to ask. But they were not alone, and for the moment, she chose to keep it to herself.

Mabel seemed to regard herself as caretaker of Sara's mental wellbeing for the moment, but after a while the atmosphere did relax. Sara seemed happier just for having gotten her insecurities off of her chest, and the conversation turned back to stories of old adventures in Gravity Falls. Beatrice bided her time, and was rewarded for her patience when Mabel said she was going to use the bathroom, and stepped off their path. Beatrice gauged the time remaining until Dipper and Wirt caught up, and took Sara by the arm.

"Hey," she said.

Sara looked surprised. "Hey."

"Look –" How was she going to say this? "I was thinking and I just wanted to say – I think you're right."

"About what?" Oh, she could not possibly have forgotten so quickly, not when Beatrice had spent the last half-hour dwelling on it like this. She swallowed her frustration.

"About what you said about – you and Wirt." The other girl reddened rapidly. "No! But I realized that I think you're right because – I didn't even think to wonder before you said something about it, but…" She crossed her arms. "I think it's true for me, too."

Sara looked, for a moment, perplexed. "What – are you saying you –?" Her eyes widened at the thought.

Oh, no no. _"Ew,"_ Beatrice said forcefully, rolling her eyes and hoping she wasn't overcompensating. "No. Not that. I mean he cut my wings, back when I was a bluebird. He turned me back into a human." Without really thinking about it, she spread her arm and looked down its length. "That's magic, just like you said. And it's just like the other thing you said, too – that's the only thing that makes me any different from any other dumb broad who got herself turned into a bird once, isn't it? But I'm here, and they're not." She dropped her arm again. Where was she going with this? Sara's face was inscrutable and Beatrice's own face was turning red, she could feel it. "So, that's just – I guess I wanted you to know that there's actually two of us in the Shouldn't-Be-Here Club –"

Sara's face crumpled and she let out a sudden, hiccuping sob. Beatrice's nerve dropped like a stone. This wasn't what she had wanted at all, and she was about to take it all back and disclaim how stupid she was, but was cut off as Sara grabbed her by the arms and pulled her into a hug.

She was shocked still. Sara was astonishingly strong, and squeezed her tight around the shoulders. It was just a second, long enough for Beatrice to register her fear that someone might see, reprimand herself for being so self-centered, and just barely begin to realize that she'd never been hugged like this by anyone outside her family before, and then Sara loosened her grip and pulled away again, knuckling her eyes to dry them. "Sorry," she choked, and then stood up straight to take a steadying breath. "Sorry. I just –"

She stopped, and turned her gaze to the train tracks, running parallel north of them. "You're actually really nice?" she said. That was more shocking than the hug. "You're so good at pretending not to be, but you are. And I'm really… I'm really glad I got to meet you."

Beatrice was so abashed she felt dizzy, but the reciprocal admittance formed on the tip of her tongue anyway: "Well, you're, um…" She rubbed her arms. "You're pretty much… everything Wirt made you out to be when we first met. I… I actually get why he fell in love with you."

Sara had a watery chuckle at that. "That's a pretty romantic notion for you. I don't think we were in _love."_

"Oh." It had never really occurred to Beatrice that there was any other option. "But I thought…"

"I bet Wirt said a lot of things back then, didn't he? He's like that." She turned her gaze wistfully backward where, unnoticed by Beatrice, the second group had stopped a ways back, the two older boys clustered around Greg. "I like Wirt a lot, don't get me wrong. He's one of my best friends. But it was just high school." She took a deep breath, made a move to speak, chickened out, and then tried again. "And – I know you like him too. By the way."

That got Beatrice right in the gut. She'd been feeling so vulnerable, so open to this girl that she'd been struggling with her envy of for nearly a week now, but immediately upon those words she felt herself closing like a trap. "I don't –"

"It's okay, though!" Sara promised, and turned back to Beatrice fully, holding up her hands for peace. "Everybody thinks it's a _thing_ and – it's not a thing. It's fine. He's a really great guy and – I know he likes you too."

That stopped Beatrice's cooldown in its tracks. "Really?" she asked, before adding stupidly, "But – I don't like him. Who's _everybody?_ "

"Pretty sure you're lying," Sara said knowingly, and Beatrice was ready to take offense until the other girl grinned, and she realized the words were an echo of her own from earlier in the morning. "I mean, really, though. Everybody but him knows it. You stare a lot."

"I'm not. I don't." She was stammering.

"Alright. But I just wanted you to know it's okay, if – if you ever change your mind." And she put up her hands to show she was done. Beatrice didn't know what to say. She kicked mindlessly at a chunk of cedar bark on the ground next to her foot and felt a little nauseous. Wasn't that stupid? How much effort every day did she put into pretending to only ever be angry about anything? Probably a lot. Wasn't it worth it if it kept people from knowing how she really felt? Well…

She just went for it. "Sara?" Sara looked to her. "…Thanks." The dark-eyed girl smiled.

A smattering of applause went up by a tree off of the path. Both of them jumped to see Mabel standing to the side, clapping with a delighted grin. "Ohh, you twooooo…" She rushed forward to envelop them in a two-way hug.

"Agh!" Beatrice spat past a mouthful of bushy brown hair. "How much did you hear?"

Mabel squealed, "Enough to know you finally _love each other like sisters!"_

"That's not what –" Mabel made shushing noises and placed a gentle hand over Sara's mouth before resuming the hug. Beatrice decided to just succumb. It was going to be one of those huggy days, it seemed.

They were broken up, though, by a shout from the east. The girls stepped away from one another and looked down the path from whence they'd came, where Dipper stood, waving his hands and gesturing. It was hard to see his face from here, but the thought that something was wrong niggled immediately at Beatrice's brain. She took up her bat and sprinted back to where the boys were waiting, because she could, and it felt right. Mabel, immediately sober and focused, was close on her heels.

Dipper, Wirt, and Greg had come to a rest together by a fallen tree, and that was the only self-evident thing about the scene that was laid out there. When Beatrice and Mabel skidded up to where Dipper waited, he began immediately babbling.

"We were just – we kept falling behind you guys because Greg was trying to wander off the path so we were taking turns carrying him and then he kind of _passed out."_ The little boy was laid on the ground by a mossy log with Wirt crouched next to him, tight-wound, eyes wide. He looked frantic.

"Did he get hurt?" Sara was last on the scene, but still on top of everything.

"No, I had him on my back, he just slipped a little, but –"

"Greg?" Mabel dropped down on the boy's other side and put a hand on his head. "Buddy, are you alright?"

Wirt looked like he was about to jump out of his skin with anxiety. "He's not responding." He ran his knuckle down Greg's cheek. "He's not responding and he won't wake up, oh God, oh God…"

Dipper said, "I thought he was having a seizure or something," and Wirt moaned in despair, and then suddenly let out a shout and pitched forward.

"Wirt!" Sara stepped toward him, but Beatrice was closer. "Wirt?" She leapt into action and dropped to her own knees to try and help him up again, but he was curled with his forehead to the ground and his fists so tight his knuckles turned shiny.

"Oh my God," Mabel said, pulling Greg in toward her protectively. He was still unresponsive.

Wirt whimpered on the ground, "Aaah…" and pulled himself up to a sitting position, only to clap his hands over his ears. Beatrice had never seen him like this before. He screwed his face up in clear pain, just for a second, whispering, _"Stop it, stop it, stop it…"_

There was nothing to hear in the whole forest but birdsong and creaking tree boughs. Wirt let out a sudden breath then, relaxed, and looked up to see four frightened faces on his. He swallowed.

"I –"

But the young man was superseded by a much smaller voice. "Hey…" Greg had peeped his eyes open and was looking around. "What's everybody lookin' so sad about?"

"Oh God, you're okay," Mabel said, clutching at him.

"Greg!" Wirt scrambled forward to do his own clutching at the little boy. "Oh God, you scared me –"

Beatrice was not having this. "You were scared for _him?"_ she demanded, crossing her hands over her chest and realizing as she did so just how hard her heart was pounding. "What about you? What the hell was that?"

Wirt muttered, "I-I'm fine, I just – I want to see Greg –" as he tried to pry open his brother's eyelids up to check his pupils.

"Like hell, dude," Dipper said. He was also visibly shaken.

Greg was recovering quickly, and tried to stand. Wirt was disinclined to let him. "I'm okay," the child said, waving his brother off. "Wirt, I'm okay. It was just the trees. They took me away for a second." It sounded to Beatrice like a fairly bog-standard Gregism, but Wirt turned immediately pale.

"They what?" he croaked. "No, no no no that can't be –" He began to run his hands through his hair, panic etched into the lines of his face. He grabbed his brother and pulled him into his lap, against the boy's protests.

"What's going on?" Dipper, not usually so responsive to anyone's needs other than Mabel's, sounded very worried.

"I don't know, I don't know," Wirt said, once and then a few more times, more to himself than anything. "I just – what does it mean?"

"I'm okay, Wirt." Greg was very reasonable. Beatrice wondered if he had to bring his brother down from his anxiety very often. "It was only a minute and they were nice about it. They picked me up and bounced me from branch to branch!" To demonstrate, he bounced where he sat. "We went a long ways and Beatrice's crow was waiting at the end."

Sara said, "What?" Beatrice felt a shock.

"Uh-huh. He said I should bring the rest of you, and then I woke up." He shrugged, like that was just how things go sometimes. Now this was getting weird. Beatrice looked at Dipper and Dipper looked at Mabel and Mabel looked really concerned for Wirt, and overall nobody seemed to have any idea what they were doing right now, so Greg decided he would be the one to take charge. He pulled away from Wirt's grasp and began jogging, his baggy oversized sweatshirt flopping with every step. "Look, I'll show you. Follow me!"

Wirt shouted, but Greg was very fast for someone with short legs. The older kids gave chase and tried to slow him, but he continued determinedly. "I know I'm going the right way," he insisted, as if that was their main concern. "See, there's the bent tree I saw on my way!" After a while they simply stopped trying, in favor of walking around him in a protective cluster, like he might float away. Beatrice didn't know what she was afraid of; she didn't rightfully understand anything that was happening right now. Wirt looked positively haunted. She didn't have it in her to try and be comforting when she knew so very well herself that this didn't feel right.

It was a half mile, maybe more, before Greg began to slow his march and eventually stopped in a small, clear space within an elm grove. Beatrice started padding up behind him, but was distracted by something crunching loudly under her shoe. When she lifted her foot, she saw a small burnt bone split where she'd stood. She recoiled. "Oh, God."

The others fanned out expectantly to search the area. Dipper pushed aside the stem of a wild rose. "What the hell…?" A grotesque arrangement of what looked like a rabbit's remains had been made at the base of the shrub. "That's sick, dude."

Sara reported, "Guys, there's a fire pit here." That got their attention. She kicked away some earth to reveal blackened kindling beneath, still letting off papery black flakes. Mabel clapped her hands to her mouth.

"Who was here?" she asked, moony-eyed.

Dipper turned to Greg. "How did you know where to find this again?" he asked, but Greg never had a chance to answer, because they were all interrupted by a deeply obnoxious laugh from a low maple bough.

The white crow was waiting for them, just as Greg had said, preening itself in a flattering shaft of sunlight. "You just missed them, I'm afraid!" it jeered.

"Who?" Beatrice demanded, and she was hardly cognizant of the immediate wave of confusion that went up from her friends when she did so.

"Oh, two of them, only a few hours back now. If I'd known you were so close behind I'd not have sent them on their way so soon. You're making much better time now that your leg's healed, Bluebird."

Beatrice fumed, as always, with the frustration of trying to talk to someone who knew so much more than they were willing to say. Greg tugged on her sleeve; "What's he saying?"

Wirt was about to stop his brother from asking pestering questions, but was cut off when Beatrice answered, "Nothing that I can make any sense of, as _usual."_ The crow puffed out its fluffy white chest indignantly. "Who was here, bird? Name names."

"Ohh, I'm not really so good with names," the crow gloated, as Mabel whispered audibly to her brother, _"Is she talking to the bird?"_ and Beatrice could just not concentrate with that sort of thing going on, so she turned back to say,

 _"Yes,_ I'm talking to the bird. Big surprise! I was pretty delirious last night but I thought we let this cat out of the bag then."

"I just…" Sara looked in awe. "I thought you were just humoring Greg."

"Beatrice would never!" Greg came to her defense. "She doesn't have a sense of humor!"

"Thank you, Greg. Now everyone shut up for a minute before this finicky bastard flies away." And she turned to the crow again and crossed her arms.

Insomuch as a crow can look impressed, this one did. "Goodness, child," it said. "You've come a long way these last few days. No longer trying to hide pointless secrets from your friends! That's real progress."

"Yes, okay, I'm an idiot, let's not dwell," Beatrice groused. _"Please_ tell me who was camped here?"

"Well, since you said please…" The crow hopped down a branch, thoughtfully. "The female looked an _awful_ lot like you, I must say. Perhaps that's why I took a shining to her." It seemed to attempt a wink. "Good with an axe. She had a male human on hand, too. More like a piece of luggage than anything. Utterly helpless, prone to idolatry."

Another tug from Greg. "What's it saying?"

"He says the –" She shot an irritated glance backward. "He says that there were two people here, a – a woman and a man. The woman looked like _me_ and had an axe and the man – he what, again?"

"Was as useless an ape as I have ever encountered, and his shoes were molded about his toes in an unpleasing fashion."

"…The man was… a coward, I think. Not very nice. And he had shoes with _toes_ built into them? Toe-shoes?" Beatrice put her hands on her hips. "What's that?"

Dipper looked struck, though. He clutched Mabel's arm. "A redheaded girl with an axe and a cowardly jerkoff in toe-shoes?" he whispered. "You know what that sounds like?

"There's no way," Mabel said, looking like she thought there was totally a way.

Sara asked, "Do you know these people?"

"I –" Dipper ran a hand through his hair. "I don't know. That sounds like Wendy and Robbie. But why would they…?"

Community-minded Mabel clarified aloud, "Wendy and Robbie are from Gravity Falls. They helped us deal with Bill – the demon, I mean. " Greg snapped his gaze up to her with uncharacteristic focus, looking surprised. "I don't know why they'd be here, but – I guess there are a lot of different reasons _we're_ all here…" Her eyes drifted to Sara, who gave a weak smile.

"Oh, I do love watching you all synthesize your tiny little ideas," the crow cooed. Beatrice ground her teeth a little. "It's such a privilege, now that Bluebird will deign to talk to me with you around. Do you feel ready, then?"

"Ready for what?"

"To head off. You're getting close. Just a few more days' walk if you make good time. You might even intercept the girl with the axe and her Broken-Hearted fool, if you're lucky." Beatrice's heart leapt, and she repeated the pronouncement to her friends, which got their attention very handily. "And I do suggest you make good time," the crow continued as Sara began gathering the others around, sliding into her old troupe-leader role like a comfortable coat. "There are other forces at work here that will complicate your journey if given enough time."

Beatrice stood separate from the group now, in her conversation with their informant. "Oh yeah?" She raised an eyebrow. "Like what?"

The crow turned its head and focused a darkblack eye on her. "Like those which allowed me to summon your little friend when I wished to speak to him," it said, and for maybe the first time, its voice was completely absent mockery or scorn. It sounded deathly serious. Beatrice felt tension leave her frame. "And don't you think it odd that he was able to understand my request to bring you here?" It hadn't, and the crow clearly knew that. "He's been chosen, and he's changing. Pine Tree is in a similar predicament. You must figure out a way to solve things very soon, or else."

"Or else what?" Beatrice felt cold.

The crow said simply, "You'll lose them." They stared at one another for a moment, and then the crow took wing without another word. Though she knew she ought to, she watched it go without any desire to question it further. There was a sick pit in her stomach. Self-centeredness wished the crow had not told her what it had, because in doing so she was burdened by secrecy. She could not imagine a way to communicate what she had just heard, certainly not to Wirt. Not without breaking his heart.

Behind her, her friends stood clustered in the sunlight, talking excitedly. Greg was seated at his brother's feet, watching the proceedings with great interest. He didn't looked changed at all. He was the same sweet kid she'd always known. A wren called from somewhere nearby that its eggs had gone, where had its eggs gone?, innocently confused by the non-presence of something that should be there. She reflected on how much more enjoyable birdsong had been before she understood it. The morning seemed left a little colder in its echo.

Beatrice braced herself, and rejoined the group with lips pressed carefully closed.

* * *

 **Next chapter should be up fairly quickly, because while this one centered largely around several expository conversations that were a huge pain in the ass to compose, the next chapter is about everything going to shit for everyone and that's much more exciting**

 **Don't bother following me at whiggitymacabee. tumblr. com, honestly it's very dead around there these days**

 **Happy new year yo!**


	13. How Desperately Fallible

If Dipper kept his eyes unfocused for long enough, while walking between the basalt outcroppings that cut from the steep earth and the trees that stood dark and solemn in patterned file deep into the distance, he could almost get the idea that he wasn't moving at all. If he let his gaze fall against the leaves on the ground and the stray fern fronds and the softwood boughs turning to mulch beneath them, and if he let his eyes relax until they no longer caught on anything, but slid unseeing across the earth, it started to seem as if the ground were nothing more than treadmill under his feet while time and space themselves whisked by in a fog at the corners of his vision.

He struggled with a vague sense of concern, but it was awfully hard to put form to when he could hardly keep it in mind. The morning hadn't started out this way, but the longer he went, the more detached he grew; the day, simply, did not burden him. Hours seemed to pass before he noticed he'd stopped paying attention. His companions asked him follow-up questions as part of conversations he'd forgotten, for a split second, he was participating in – not inattentive, but dissociated, coming over and over again to sporadic and dramatic awareness of his mindless actions and faraway thoughts. One minute it was morning, and they were all six together while Beatrice interrogated a white crow – then Greg took him and Wirt by the hands, and tugged them off-route to show off the slime mold on a nursery tree, bathed in noontime light. They were walking, wading through a shallow beck that cut across the forest lowlands, and Dipper wondered if they were following in Wendy's footsteps, and how she was doing, because they hadn't spoken in so long now; then, before he could fully pull himself from the thought, the sun was low on the hidden western horizon, giving the woods the quality of wildfire. He was halfway through building a fire pit, and stared at the kindling in his hands. Somewhere behind him, Sara was talking, and Mabel laughed. Greg began to sing.

He closed his eyes, opened his fingers, and the kindling spilled out.

 _Only a few days left,_ he told himself as they sat down together to a meal around a crackling fire that he hardly remembered lighting. _We're almost to Gravity Falls._ He had to believe the crow was right about that.

"So, um," Sara asked, as she speared a beet on a stick and stuck it over the fire. Low orange dusk made a patch on her cheek. "When did you start talking to birds, Beatrice?"

Beatrice was wedged tight between Mabel and Wirt, against the tree best suited for back support. Around a mouthful of roasted apple, she said, "I used to be a bird. You learn fast."

"I never knew." Wirt seemed pensive. "What do birds even talk about?"

Greg volunteered, "Bugs and eggs!"

"Why didn't you tell anyone that a crow was trying to help us out?" Mabel was the only one of them who could still stomach the candy. She gnawed on a cookies 'n' cream bar. "That makes me feel so special I literally can't even handle it."

"Because I'm a dumbass who keeps pointless secrets," Beatrice said breezily.

Dipper couldn't help smiling at that, but mumbled, "You're too hard on yourself." Something warm moved against his back.

Greg murmured, "What did you say?" and Dipper realized that he'd been reminiscing. He was beneath the camping blanket now, staring up at the couple of stars winking through the canopy. The fire was low. Mabel was snoring.

His jaw worked for a moment until he managed to summon, "Nothing," in a whisper. The little boy rolled back over toward his brother, and in a few moments his breathing grew deep and even. Dipper tried to do the same, because he suspected Wirt was still awake, and did not want fear in his exhalation.

His disconcert was hard to put words to, because of the prolonged focus it required. He wasn't quite okay and he couldn't say how but he _knew._ He felt like he was sleeping awake, enduring strangeness and lacking the clear-headedness to question it – ongoing echoes of his dream that had stretched so uncannily into the morning. He was just _tired,_ he told himself _,_ just spacing out, maybe catching the flu or something. He turned onto his side. Moaning, ripping, keening noises drifted out of the darkness, and he felt sick dread wash from his throat downward.

He'd know if something was really wrong. Mabel would have told him. Mabel wouldn't let him go on acting strangely, so he must not be. That thought helped. And tomorrow, things would be better. Do a hard reset and wait for the strangeness to pass, like a 24-hour virus. That was all he needed.

He closed his eyes and dug his fingers into the ground, which was solid, and promised not to move as long as he didn't.

–

 _(It is time.)_

The morning bit at Wirt's exposed arms, and he retracted them beneath the blanket with a shiver hard enough to jolt him from sleep's comfortable cradle. His first, immediate thought was a mental check on himself: was he back to being of sound mind and body yet, not overcome with malaise in the night? He flexed a hand experimentally, like it might reveal him to himself.

He took a chance in peering out beneath an eyelid. The sun was diffused by sheer clouds, the air pinkish and young. Birds sang; for the first time in his life, Wirt had occasion to wonder what they were talking about. He began to roll over, but made it onto his back and stopped. The hair at the nape of his neck prickled and his ears caught, just for a second, on the hint of a voice, gone as quickly as it was identified. Wirt lifted his head. He felt gray and wrung out; every morning he woke in the hope that he might find himself feeling normal again, and it always left him disappointed. Normal had been left behind days ago now. There it was again – a whisper or something more distant, recognizable only by the impression of closed consonants. Speech without words. It followed the same patterns as the wind in the cedar boughs.

Greg squirmed as Wirt wearily sat up, hunched inside his cloak against the morning cold. His eyes lingered in the fogged woods to the north, the mossy stippled trunks and patchy brush and rain-polished boulders, all spotted with sunlight thinned by foliage and cloud cover. It should have been lovely to him, but his demeanor cast a sour shadow across the land. He struggled with a dreadful idea, lately, of these woods as a grasping, hungry thing, wearing at them all like a pursuit predator – not with tooth and claw, but by nasty whispers, bad feelings and insidious stress that exhorted them to eat themselves alive.

A very strange sensation erupted on the inside of his wrist, pulling and twisting in the thin skin, as he reflected on the morning. He parted the opening of his cape, drew forward his arm, and rolled back his sleeve; in the concealed place behind a curtain of cloth, he squinted through a sharply angled shadow and then stopped. His stomach curdled.

 _Not again._

He hid his arm immediately and looked to the others in a furtive manner. The girls lay still beneath their cover in a warm-looking lump on the far side of the fire pit, Dipper's back was turned, and Greg breathed visibly deeply. There was no movement anywhere but in the small minutiae of the wilderness. Shakily, Wirt turned his back to them, hunched over himself, and brought his arm out fully into the sunlight. A soft young shoot, two small burgundy leaves on one black stem, was curled gently in his palm, elaborately twisting out from the varicose vein from which it had sprouted. He examined it gingerly, like a parasite; it made a sickening tug in his flesh when he brushed it.

Wirt rubbed his nose, made one more glance over his shoulder at the others, then pinched the leaf with vile dread. A sharp tug plucked it out, and he inhaled abruptly. Blood filled the little crater that the sprout left. He sucked on the wound and tossed the leaf away unceremoniously, a weak attempt at normalization – he was alright, he was going to be okay. Yet again, that subaudible mutter ran underneath the birdsong in the air and the gentle bends in the trees, in and out of earshot like a conversation in movement. A hard shiver ran up his spine. In his occasion of greatest vulnerability yesterday, while Greg was laid out cold on the ground, the trees' voices had finally reached out to Wirt fully, just for a second, so overwhelming that he hadn't been able to conceal it. They didn't exactly use _words,_ but their intention was clear and insistent: _You can come too. We have something to show you._ He feared that it could still happen again.

It was a miracle that nobody but Greg had noticed yet that anything was wrong with him, and even on that front, he liked to think he was doing a good job of downplaying it. He wasn't stupid enough to think that nothing was wrong, but concern was worth its weight in gold in such lean circumstances as these, and Greg was more worth investing the group's energy in. Wirt would manage himself.

He didn't realize how far away he had fallen into his own thoughts until the blanket moved, and he almost jumped out of his skin. Dipper was half-rolled over, looking at Wirt past his shoulder – they caught one another's eyes and froze. Wirt still had his wrist in his mouth to stem the bleeding, and Dipper looked tense and concerned. Had he seen anything? He pulled his lips away, but before he could ask a question that would certainly raise more suspicion than it allayed, the other young man broke their gaze and turned away. He looked self-conscious, but whether for intruding on a private moment, or for some reason of his own, Wirt couldn't say. His wrist throbbed.

Wirt swallowed away a dry throat, and was about to speak again, but Dipper straightened and pasted over his woeful demeanor as Greg rolled over, reaching out blindly for Wirt's arm and patting it with satisfaction when he found it. "G'mornin, brother of mine," he murmured from between them, and opened a sly gray eye. Jason Funderburker poked his head out of the boy's sweater and yawned a froggy yawn. "Guess what I dreamed about?"

Wirt tried consciously to release the tension from his shoulders. "Um, I don't know." He was distracted in not wanting Greg to see him upset, but realized after a second he'd also failed to indicate his interest, and added, "What did you dream about?"

"Mm…" He thought about it. "Trees."

Wirt's eyes dashed briefly up to Dipper's again. The other boy would not meet his gaze. Wirt swallowed, and measured his response for their lack of privacy: "Oh yeah?" He sounded transparently scared. "That's – neat."

"Yeah, I really liked it." Greg sat up, yawning and knuckling his eye. "I was up in the treetops and you were at the bottom to get me to come down. You said you'd catch me." That was a kick in the gut. "But you kept talking over what the trees were trying to say and you wouldn't stop. I couldn't hear them." The little boy frowned pensively, but brightened back up when he saw Dipper. "Hey! And you were in the tree with me, too."

Dipper asked, "Who, me?" Greg smiled. "Well, I was probably trying to get you down, you goose." He sounded admirably normal.

"No. You were higher up than me." Greg turned to look as the girls began to rouse in response to their noise, and stood up to greet them without so much as a complaint about leaving the blanket's warmth. Left alone, Wirt and Dipper looked at one another again, but neither of them could perceive anything other than jumpiness in the other. Wirt almost asked what was wrong, but didn't. Dipper took the bedding to pack it away, Wirt stood to help him fold, and both of them worked in unhappy silence.

They set off half-cocked that day, or Wirt did at least, his head stuffed full of fuzzy worries that only rarely seemed to manifest into something understandable, and then only briefly before they devolved back into his own dogged brand of lifetime angst. Greg was downright chipper, seeming none the worse for yesterday's strange events. Actually, everyone but himself and Dipper seemed to be in the best spirits they had since the beginning of their journey. The girls clustered loosely, joking and telling stories. When had Beatrice become so personable? This day kept getting stranger and stranger.

It was a long morning, but not an unpleasant one, despite Wirt's feeling of impending doom. The sun broke through the misty morning in shafts that began at a long angle from the east and straightened slowly, like spotlights searching for their star. Evergreen foliage dripped gold dew, and gold foliage absorbed the sunlight richly, casting its aspect about in the brisk fogged air and imparting a heavenly glow. Deer trundled occasionally across their path and then quickly fled; Wirt had the mad idea that he could hear them expressing their alarm to one another.

The long morning turned to long afternoon. Wirt's feet hurt – he was wearing badly into the heel of his right sneaker, he could feel it – and his legs were sore. No, his legs had been sore for days. He was just being a wimp. Greg brought him a banana slug to impress with, and he tried to grin convincingly. When Mabel saw the slug, she picked it up to make a moustache of it, then shouted and threw it away when her upper lip began to go numb. Greg howled with laughter. Even Dipper's smile was real. Couldn't Wirt even manage that much?

They stopped to eat, and stopped to eat again three hours later, and then took a normal break to relieve footsoreness, and still no matter how long the day progressed without incident Wirt fought back a sick, sad feeling, aching and needful. He wandered up next to Sara and Beatrice and tried involve himself in their conversation. Though they seemed glad for his company, and though Sara had him aid her in telling about the time they lost Greg in a farmer's market for a full half hour before they found him making friends with a sommelier, he was hyperaware of an odd sort of barrier there – or maybe it was only a barrier for him, caused by an easiness between both girls that he was sure had not existed just a few days prior, some quiet understanding they had reached mutually and found solidarity in. He did not feel like the intermediary between them in the way he had before. That should have been a good thing. A selfish little worm in his soul laid it out as proof that nobody needed him.

When the sun was centered in the sky's western house, they found themselves walking parallel to a trickling creek that grew fatter as they followed it upstream. Long flat river stones jutted from its clear surface, and the air near it swelled with the healthy odor of riparian decay. Sara jumped off of the bank to step from rock to rock, though Wirt wished she wouldn't, because it was giving Greg ideas. She put misplaced faith in a stone that seesawed under her weight, and went splashing into the ankle-deep water. She shouted at first, but then seemed to give it a second thought and said, "Actually, the water's not bad."

Beatrice laid along the bank and dipped a hand in the rushing stream, and Mabel began to take her shoes off. Wirt felt a pang of irritation that they were all so interested in something as mundane as a creek. He did not remember that nobody else held his fears for what the coming days might bring; for all they knew, the journey was nearly at its end, and the future looked the brightest it ever had. Greg tugged at his hand for them to join Sara and the rest, but he shook his head. "Aw, shucks." The little boy kicked at a pinecone.

Dipper, too, was hanging back. Wirt glanced to him in the hopes he might find agreement there that they needed to keep moving, but Dipper's attention was further westward, frowning at something in the distance. "Hey, keep walking upstream," he told the others as he proceeded to do just that. The girls followed, and Wirt felt gratified, at least until they began to approach the area that had caught Dipper's attention.

They pushed past a barrier of thick ferns and greenwood twigs and clambered over a rotting log as thick as Sara was tall. Beyond it opened their view of, not a lake, but nearly one, a swollen clot in the brook's artery which at one point may have been dammed by a beaver or other. The blockage was gone now, but the widened banks it had formed behind it remained, a deep expanse of clear water shimmering in shade-cut sunlight. Small weeping shrubs dotted its bank, and a rocky earth escarpment rose on its north side with trees growing all off-angled from its face. Mabel _"Ooo"_ ed gently under her breath.

"Wow." Beatrice stepped forward, eyes following the embankment up, up, to the red-gold sky only just barely visible past the ridge. "This is really beautiful." Wirt thought he had never heard her sound so sincere to a positive effect before.

Sara was still wading, resigned fully now to having wet shoes. She worked her way up through the eddies between the stream and the widened channel that fed it, and splashed into the standing pool. She looked to be glowing in the rich light, and sighed happily, bending down to run the water over her hands. "I want to take a bath," she said longingly.

"Oh my God." Mabel dropped her shoes where she stood. "That's the best idea I've ever heard."

Wirt's head filled immediately with red flags, and not even the ones related to his sense that they needed to keep moving or the world was going to end. He looked conspicuously at Beatrice in the split second before his stupid gibbering mouth spilled out, "Well, not – n-not together, right…?"

Mabel raised an are-you-nuts eyebrow at him. "Uh, no." Out the corner of his eye, he saw Sara giggle, not unkindly. His face went red. "We'll do shifts. Boys go first because us ladies need to be able to take our time, for beauty." Beatrice snorted, _"Pfft,"_ and Mabel shot her a grin. Wirt tried to calm himself. That was a better proposal, but not by a huge amount.

Dipper seemed to share Wirt's misgivings. "I don't know," he said, fidgeting uncomfortably. "We still have a lot of ground to cover…"

"Yeah, and it'll be a lot more pleasant once our stank-butts have cleaned up," Mabel shot back. "Come on, Stinky."

"Yeah, Wirt!" Greg had already removed his sweater and was starting to wriggle out of his trousers. "Let's take a bath!"

When even Greg was eager to bathe, they all must have really needed it.

There was one good thing about this detour, Wirt reflected as the girls disappeared, giggling, beyond the underbrush and he despondently began to disrobe: locker room anxiety was an extremely effective distraction from all the other, more important things he had to be nervous about right then. Greg was undressed and in the water with Jason Funderburker before Wirt or Dipper had finished taking their socks off, paddling and hollering with great joy; the two older boys were much slower, deliberately and singularly determined not to lose control of a single glance. Wirt entered the pool with a shudder. It was not as temperate as everyone had made it out to be.

Behind him, Dipper too waded in, and once they were both up to their waists, the atmosphere did seem to relax a little. Greg was causing a great ruckus in the center of the pool, bobbing up to his chin; between each of the huge splashes he produced, he explained that it was to get the fish excited. Wirt shook his head and sat down on a submerged rock. Dipper plugged his nose and made the full-body plunge. He resurfaced with a shocked gasp and stammered, "S-Sara said it was _warm."_

Wirt said, "She doesn't get cold. She's like a tiny furnace." Dipper snorted and wiped the droplets off of his soul patch (which Wirt still suspected he sported because he couldn't do any better, a theory that a full week without a hint of shadow on his jaw strongly supported).

"Wirt! Wirt!" Greg came dog paddling over with his hair plastered over his eyes. "Let's play Marco Polo!"

Dipper and Wirt both answered, "No," immediately and definitively. With his eyes closed, one never knows what he's touching underwater.

They didn't spend too terribly long in the pool; after all, the girls were waiting. But there was something surprisingly relaxing about the dip, once they got used to the temperature. Wirt and Dipper lounged mostly at the shallow edges with a lazy eye on Greg at the center; at its deepest the pool hardly covered his scalp, and he was a good swimmer. Their mother had been very insistent he take lessons after the incident on Halloween night, '79. Wirt dunked his head and scrubbed with great satisfaction, at least until his finger scrabbled at a wound just past his hairline, and he made a sound of pain.

"You alright?" Dipper asked.

Wirt rubbed at the scab. The water that came away on his fingers was tinged red. "Yeah, I… I forgot about that cut."

Dipper seemed genuinely surprised: "What cut?"

"Um. The one from when you hit me with a tree that first night?"

"Oh."

Greg swam up on them underwater, sharklike, and then burst through the surface with a roar. Both young men raised their hands for splash protection. "Haha!" He flopped and crawled atop a river rock. "I'm the sea monster! What's the name? … _Silica!"_

"What?" Wirt asked. "You mean Scylla."

"I said what I meant!" Jason Funderburker popped his head out of the water and leapt onto Greg's rock, and Greg picked him up for a hug. "Sea monsters! Silica and Crib Death!" At Wirt's gesture, he clambered out of the water, back toward their clothes.

Dipper watched him go. "There's no way he mixed those up organically..."

"No," Wirt agreed, digging a finger in his ear. "Probably something his dad told him as a joke." Dipper gave him a sidelong glance. "What?"

"'His' dad?"

"Yeah. We're half-brothers."

"Really?" Dipper cast a quick, comparative look between the two of them, and scratched his wet head. "I didn't know that."

"Well, I mean – a few years ago I stopped trying to intentionally bring it up, so…"

"No, yeah, it's cool," Dipper said, turning toward the bank to leave the water. Wirt followed. "It's just – I wouldn't have guessed."

That was a gratifying thing to hear. Wirt opened his mouth, ready to confess all the many failures that it had taken to get him to this point: how he had spent the first five full years of Greg's life being a useless and ungrateful churl before his time in the Unknown illuminated him enough to make him realize that he wasn't a put-upon sophisticate, but an asshole. He was prepared to say all of that aloud, but he realized, suddenly, that it didn't really matter. Maybe it was okay for once not to go out of his way to inform others of how desperately fallible he was.

"…Thanks," was all he said, and in a more relaxed quiet than before, they dressed.

Within a few moments, they emerged into the tiny clearing where Beatrice, Sara, and Mabel had situated, and passed the bath off to them. The girls unfurled themselves from what resembled a slumber-party cluster, and tromped away through the thicket that concealed the view of the creek. Their voices faded low, lingered briefly in a single location a few dozen yards away, and then Mabel whooped loudly and a splash sounded. Someone laughed. Wirt and Dipper settled down, plucking uncomfortably at their clothes where they stuck to their damp skin. Greg was still on his post-fun high, and clambered up a large mossy boulder that stood up against a blackberry thicket. A cloud shifted somewhere in the unseen sky, and late afternoon sun broke through a crack in the forest canopy and spread like a spilled drink.

It was hard for Wirt to admit that he felt a little better, because that would mean acknowledging that his anxiety was mostly self-inflicted and could be washed away as easily as the grime under his fingernails, but – he did feel better. An otherworldly little murmur ran past his hearing, but it felt more contextualized now: a symptom of something strange, to be sure, but everything here was strange, and he was managing not to have mental breakdowns about all of them. Why should this be different? Across from him, Dipper kicked back beneath a balding black tree, pulled his camping knife out of his pack, and began whittling inexpertly at a fallen branch. Greg crouched atop the boulder and peered as far as he could into the bramble, and Wirt took a deep breath and leaned back against a maple trunk. It was a beautiful evening despite everything, wasn't it? He closed his eyes, and the inside of his lids glowed gold.

When the thin, distant sound of a wolf's howl crossed the air, Wirt nearly disregarded it, mistaking it initially for another of the lost voices he kept hearing. Dipper reacted sooner. He snapped his head up and looked to the direction of the noise, straightening where he sat and changing his grip on the knife from that of a crafter to a hunter. The long high keen kept a steady timbre for several seconds before warbling and fading out again, and Wirt felt chills as it ended. The three of them waited in silence to see if it would sound again, but nothing came. The girls were still chatting out by the water, seeming not to have heard it. Wirt pulled his cape across his lap uncomfortably.

Greg seemed downright entranced by the call. He stood motionless, eight feet above them in a fat block of sunlight atop the stone, before sitting down and resting his face in his hand with a troubled look. Jason Funderburker jumped over next to him and made a concerned, _"Rorrp?"_

"That's one sad wolf," Greg responded, a little distantly. He glanced down at Dipper. "Hey, Dipper?"

Dipper seemed to have trouble pulling his gaze from the origin of the wolf call. "Yeah?" he asked, lingering on the farthest visible trees.

"Well, okay, see… Hm." Greg fidgeted. "I have a question I want to ask… but I'm not supposed to ask."

Dipper caught Wirt's eye. "Okay…"

"Should I ask it?"

"Um…"

Wirt intervened. "Who said you can't ask a question?" He sat up straighter against his tree.

"Well, that's the thing I can't tell you! Ughhh." His brother slumped his shoulders dramatically and slid a few feet down the boulder. "This is a real catch-Lucy-Loo."

"Hmm." Wirt couldn't tell if this was all leading up to a Greg-styled nothing. "Well, I'm going to override that ruling."

"Oh yeah?" Greg squinted at him. "Under what precedent?"

"…Older brother precedent. Ask the question."

"Oh, thanks, Your Honor!" Greg sat up again and hugged himself. "Okay. Do you know who Bill is, Dipper?" he asked, and Wirt thought straightaway that that was certainly a tick in the box for this all being nonsense. There was no one named Bill here, unless Greg had christened a squirrel as such without mentioning it to anyone else.

…Right? Wirt hadn't heard that name before, had he? It was so common. He was about to ask Dipper a question, but lost it as he turned toward him.

A branch shifted in the wind, and a shaft of bright sunlight opened across Dipper's face as he watched. It was hard to tell in its glare, but it seemed, in that moment, that the other young man's expression changed. Concern disappeared and was replaced by something flat and cold and smooth. He leaned forward and laid his arms across his knees, casual-like, with far more poise than awkward, tense Dipper usually exhibited.

He answered flatly, "Never heard of the guy," without even looking at Greg. A weird feeling hit Wirt at the base of his stomach.

"Oh." Greg looked put-out. "Yeah, okay. I just remember when Mabel talked about that name a few days ago, and then that wolf was howling just now that –"

"Wolves don't talk." Dipper's smooth tone cut him off without room for quarter. "And they wouldn't know what they were talking about if they did."

There was an edge to his voice which was so hard to identify that Wirt wondered if he wasn't imagining it. Greg's reaction made him think he wasn't. The little boy sat back, looking surprised, and then chastened, which made Wirt immediately angry. "…Okay," Greg allowed after a moment. "I was just wondering anyway." With a meek shuffle, he _hupp_ ed himself to his feet to approach the peak of the boulder again, and went back down its other side.

Wirt was glad to have space, just for a moment, because as soon as Greg disappeared behind the rock he rounded on Dipper. He sat forward on his knees and hissed, "What the hell was –?"

But the subject of his question was already ephemeral; whatever he'd perceived in Dipper's face and tone were gone. The other young man still sat hunched over his own knees, but as his shoulders relaxed, the body language changed from that of casual authority to something like mild illness. He blinked rapidly in a reorienting manner, let go of his legs, and then looked up at Wirt, with a little head tilt and a genuinely implied question: _What are you talking about?_

Wirt was already wrong-footed and was about to let his momentum carrying him full into an overhasty, underconsidered diatribe about mistreating his little brother despite their not having established between them what exactly had just happened – but was distracted as Dipper brushed his face with a hand and left a black gloss along his cheek. Wirt paused and pulled back; Dipper saw him do so, and his look of incomprehension intensified. "You've got… on your face…" The other young man wiped his face again, but that made the mark worse. His palms were covered with slick black liquid.

"Oh," Dipper said, as Wirt's stomach plunged. "It's the sap from the branch I was messing with."

Wirt picked up the chunk of half-whittled wood from the forest floor. The slices in its bark oozed dark oil; he dropped it like it was a snake. "Th-that's not sap…"

"What is it?" Wirt was already leaning back on his hand to give a second look to the tree Dipper sat beneath. The deep cracks in its ashy bark were black, and glinted faintly where the light hit them. He scrambled around to the tree's left side, to find new perspective on a large knot in the trunk; it was warped into the shape of a wretched face, peeking out from a collar of sparse red leaves. Wirt felt sick. Again, Dipper asked, "What?"

Words came from the wind like someone whispering into his neck: _It is time._ Wirt shuddered.

"Edelwood," he choked. He stumbled backward, dropped to the ground, and wrapped his arms around his knees as Dipper craned his neck to follow his line of deduction. The other young man's face twisted a little when he saw the warped features in the wood.

"That's… creepy."

"Someone died here," Wirt said hollowly. Dipper stiffened. "Someone died right where you were sitting, some – some little kid, or someone's mom or…" He took a deep breath.

Breeze sussured the dead red Edelwood leaves and their evergreen siblings all around. They shook up the sun where it rested on the ground. Dipper didn't look at Wirt, didn't look away from the tree. In the distance, the girls' chatter mixed with the sounds of the woodlands. "I thought maybe that was what made the trees grow," Dipper said finally. "I wasn't sure."

Wirt answered a dull, "Yeah."

"That's…" He pasted back his still-damp hair. "Jesus. What kind of place is this?"

"I don't know." Wirt rubbed his arm. "I never knew. I mean, I – I always had a hunch? We almost – Greg and I ended up here the first time because we almost drowned, you know. We blacked out underwater and woke up in the Unknown." He swallowed. "It felt like weeks and, and I had the choice to stay there at the end and I didn't take it. It wasn't until I'd woken up in the hospital that I realized that deciding to stay probably would have meant we'd – we'd…"

Dipper saw his distress. He reached out and put a hand on Wirt's shoulder, a familiar, but not unwelcome gesture: "Yeah. I get it."

"So…" Wirt inhaled wetly, and tried to pass it off like it had an environmental source. "Yeah. This is the sort of place where people turn into trees and where little kids show up when they're half-dead. To answer your question." He pulled up his shoulders under his cloak and crossed his arms. That would have been a good place to stop, but he couldn't help adding, "And the longer I'm back here the more I feel like I'm going – going crazy, you know? Everything is just… wrong." The small, deep wound on the inside of his wrist brushed his shirt, and he held back a grimace.

A premature owl called out into the gloaming woods; the afternoon was moving toward peak sundown. Another little breeze touched them, and Dipper shivered in perfect time for the first of every night's mysterious shrieks to touch their ears, long and mournful and mad. Wirt raised his face and looked at the Edelwood again. The cat in the witch's cottage had said that the same force that grew it was the source of the awful noise. True or not, the tree's expression was frighteningly appropriate to the tone of the screams.

"I feel like I'm going a little bonkers too, lately," Dipper spoke up, voice hoarse. Wirt nodded mutely, torn between the desire to fish for affirmation of his fears, and the surety that Dipper meant a much more colloquial sort of madness than he did. He didn't deserve to be unloaded on. "Hearing – hearing voices, the whole shebang…"

Dipper's smile was thin and pursed. Now Wirt knew for sure he was joking. He tried to smile back: "Yeah, sometimes I – I really think the trees are talking to me." Jokey tone; barely-concealed discontent. He was just a mess today.

"Absolutely, yeah," Dipper agreed. "Losing track of time, experiencing, y'know, premonitions – like my very – my very _dreams_ are reaching through to the real world…" He made spooky fingers. It was just enough to eke out Wirt's real smile, and he rubbed at his neck. "Hey man, I'll only go crazy if you do, how's that sound?"

Wirt turned to look at Dipper; "Deal," he said after a moment, and they shook on it, without gravity, still performative. The wound on Wirt's head ached the tiniest bit. It had been a very long, very strange week.

Both young men turned as the girls' voices began, finally, to draw back up on them. Their volume increased with the sounds of crunching twigs and leaves, and then Mabel rounded the thicket with scraggly wet hair and a loud, happy greeting. "How's my favorite brother!" she cried, and plopped down next to Dipper with Sara and Beatrice following behind. "And my favorite man in a cape, of course," she added. Wirt frowned. "What's on your face, Dip? Are you already dirty again?"

"Ohh God, I needed that." Beatrice stretched broadly and settled at the base of the Edelwood tree before Wirt could say anything. Sara sat down by the path they'd returned on and stretched out her legs, looking equally relaxed.

"What a nice way to end the day," she murmured, leaning forward to prop her elbows on her own flat lap, and cupping her face in her hands. Wirt was certainly not flexible enough to have done that. "I haven't felt this okay since…"

"I haven't felt this okay since I was getting dressed for the Halloween dance," Mabel said bluntly. She took up her hair and wrung it out over the ground. "God, it's been a weird week."

Wirt said, "I was just thinking that."

"This has been the weirdest week of my life, and I got turned into a bird once," Beatrice said. In Dipper's previous spot by the Edelwood tree, she was now the one in full sunlight, and it caught her hair brilliantly. It was darker when wet, and had almost the look of a low ember. She raised her chin up to rest her head on the tree and exposed her pale neck, and Wirt only realized he'd been staring when she quickly snapped her attention back down and startled him. "Oh yeah – the newt!"

"Oh!" Mabel put up her hands. "There was a newt on a rock in the pool! He was like Jason Funderburker's little baby cousin! Greg should see it. Where is he?"

"Oh, he's…" Wirt turned to the boulder and petered off, blinking. Where _was_ Greg? He'd been on top of the rock, and then…

Sara sat upright and turned around. "Greg?" she called into the woods behind her.

"He was just here," Dipper said, but that wasn't true, was it? He'd climbed around the other side of the boulder after asking his forbidden question and then… Wirt couldn't remember. Hadn't he come back around? That had been ten minutes ago, easily.

But his brother wasn't dumb enough to wander off into the woods on his own. He stood up. "Greg?"

"Yo, GREGI" Mabel cupped her hands around her mouth and bellowed. "Where you at, buddy?"

He was going to come tromping around the blackberry patch at any moment now, for sure. Wirt turned on his heel and peeked around the back of the maple he'd been leaning against. The forest was sun-dappled and darkening, and nothing moved.

An unpleasant torque hit his stomach, just a second before the high, strident sound of a wolf's howl crossed the air again.

It was much closer this time than the last.

Wirt turned back around. Sara stood up. All five teenagers met each other's gazes in a frozen moment of realization, and then, without even a word spoken to one another, they began to fan out in all directions through the trees, shouting the same mantra over and over: "Greg? Greg! Where are you, Greg?"

This was unbelievable, Wirt thought as he passed through repeating, flickering treeshadows. He literally could not believe it. Greg was _fine,_ he had to be; in a moment they'd hear his voice calling back from the clearing they'd just left, and he would be standing there with his hands on hips as they returned, ready to tell them off for wandering. Wirt stopped, and spun on his heels. The sun was creeping lower in the sky. Beatrice came up behind him and followed his gaze.

"He's fine," she said automatically.

Wirt answered, "I know," and they kept on into the thick of the woods.

The others' shouts spread out at further and further distance as they walked. _"Greg! Greg?"_ How far could an eight-year-old possibly go in fifteen minutes? Why wasn't he answering? Maybe he was, and they couldn't hear him over their own voices. Wirt stopped shouting for a moment and trained his ears. Somewhere a few hundred yards to the south, Dipper called out. Mabel's voice followed. A bird squawked at the commotion. Nothing. How? Did Greg think this was funny?

Wirt searched. He pushed aside shrubs, lifted rotting logs, peeked inside hollow roots, as if his brother were an errant shoe or ball. Every time he stood back up, his head rushed. Beatrice shouted, again and again behind him: _"Greg! Where the fuck are you?"_ and Wirt thought he asked her not to curse, but couldn't really remember.

His head did not feel attached to his body. The forest floor was spongy under his shoes, and the sun got deeper and brighter on the far side of every tree they passed. There was something in his ears – hissing, mumbling, scraps of words. He shook his head sharply: no distractions. "Greg!"

 _("Rest… truth… it is time…")_

No distractions. "GREG!"

 _("Pilgrim see… help worry –")_

Again, he shook his head. It left trails in his vision. The sun was so low and luminous. It washed the whole forest scarlet. He took a step, and found his foot sinking into the ground. He looked down: no, his shoe was flat on the earth. Another step; he was slogging through molasses. His gait caught on nothing, and he dropped to his knees. Far, far away, Beatrice screamed, _"Greg! GRE– …Wirt?"_ He could see gold through his eyelids, through his hands, and half a dozen different voices chanted his brother's name, over and over again, in the pulsing, jewel-red forest: _"Greg! Greg! Greg! Greg! Greg!..."_ He put his face on his hands to make it stop, to make everything stop _moving._

He took a deep breath to bring him back to himself, and then it all just became… clear.

His eyes had been closed, but now they were open. His hands once hid him, but now he'd let them fall. The overwhelming weight that had brought him to the ground was lifted, and he inhaled unobstructed as he rose, air-light, beyond himself. He looked up in awe. The tree canopy rotated like a kaleidoscope in shades of autumn above him, a hundred red and yellow-green hues gradated along the curling, fractaled black boughs that underlined the slanting shadows of dusk. Trees reached out to greet him as he settled in the thick of their limbs, murmuring happily: _It is time. You will see. We will show you._

They parted their branches to make a path through the sky, and began to push him past. Leaves brushed his shoulders, gentle guiding hands through the arcing trail. Wirt could not feel his arm, or feet, and he could not close his eyes; the swaying woods were immediate, intangible, inescapable. Far below him, the forest floor rushed past, swept by lengthening, waning sunlight. What little atmosphere peeked through the canopy was curdled in color, twisted yellow and orange, a storm-sky without electricity. He passed beneath bird nests and broken boughs, above mushroom beds and tree stumps and wild roses and holly shrubs, and ever onward into the shifting, opening overhang until –

He was slowed. Leaves pressed gently on his face, bidding him to hush, and guided his gaze downward. In the sunspotted glade below, a small boy lay in the shade of a weeping tree.

Greg. It was Greg!

Wirt tried to reach out. He called to his brother, but his voice was just a hush in an elmwood nook. He couldn't move. _What can I do? Let me help him!_ he begged, but could feel the forest itself shake its head.

 _It is time._

Greg curled in a soft patch of grassy moss, eyes closed and fists clenched, while Wirt watched impotently. Was he hurt? Was he in pain? The front of his sweater was moving, and in a second Jason Funderburker spilled out in a heap, released from under the boy's weight. He shook his head and then turned back to put his small green front-feet on his human's face. He asked, _"Rorrup?"_

Greg opened an eye and smiled a little – so he wasn't dead, oh thank God, he wasn't dead. "Hi, friend," he said weakly. He had heavy bags under his eyes. Lace-edged leaves peeked from beneath the collar of his shirt. Jason Funderburker croaked. Greg's eyes closed again.

And now they weren't alone: a long gray shape slunk from the shadows behind them, yellow-eyed and sallow. Wirt's heart leapt into his throat. It was the wolf of four days past, the final survivor from its pack. Greg appeared not to notice as it paced the perimeter of the clearing. Black oil no longer dripped from the animal's mouth, and it seemed smaller than it had when it was trying to kill them, but it carried that same air of uncanny intelligence, and it was fixated clearly on Greg.

"…much longer, little rabbit," it murmured, only just loud enough to be heard from the treetops. "It will be over soon." Wirt tried to shout again. Jason Funderburker croaked in surprise, and spun around with a short hop, but Greg took no notice of the wolf's nearing presence; he laid stone-still in a little sunlit stripe, brow furrowed, vaguely concerned. One of his hands ventured outward to curl in the grass, and where it did, small green vines extended toward his fingers. It was a strawberry sprout.

A night-scream erupted from not far out of sight, shrill and excited. The wolf raised its head to regard the noise; Greg opened one eye halfway and focused on the slim creepers around his wrist. _"Rorrup?"_ Jason Funderburker asked of Greg, but got no clear response, so he turned to the wolf: _"Rorrip!"_ He gestured clearly for help.

The wolf's attention was captured again by the frog's movement. "Be calm," it intoned, and Greg stopped fidgeting. It took another step toward the child in the golden grass. Wirt raged in the treetops, wanting to rip at his own face in fear. The wolf sniffed lightly around Greg's neck and ears, closed its eyes, and whispered, "It is time."

Jason looked as upset as Wirt felt. _"Rorr, rorrup –"_ he began to say, but the wolf shook its head.

"This is not my doing," it said, circling around to Greg's back. His eyes had begun to drift closed again, but snapped open as he heard it speak. He looked more confused than afraid – of course he did, of course he did. He lost focus quickly again. Wirt watched him slip back into a doze with terrible fury in his heart.

Jason Funderburker gestured plaintively. _"Rorp, rorr-rorrup."_

The wolf repeated, a little edgily, "I _said,_ this is not my doing." Greg frowned, but didn't open his eyes. "I did not ask your rabbit here for the sake of revenge. That is not… it is not what my sisters would have wanted." It paused, turned away just for a second. Its furry neck rippled as it swallowed. "I will serve differently now. It is time. The trees have been speaking it all day."

There was no logic, no justice in this world, and no way Wirt could lash out to vent his emotion. _Time for what?_

 _"Rorrp."_ Jason Funderburker sadly brushed his tiny green fingers over Greg's face. _"Rrrbt."_

The wolf raised its head, looming imperiously over the frog. "It is not our decision to make. My sisters and I tried our best, but the Edelwood will not go without its chosen caretaker any longer. Something will break soon, and he will be needed." The tree that shaded them hushed its agreement. Wirt shouted until his throat was raw, and no one heard. The wolf turned its gaze back downward.

It whispered in Greg's ear, "Are you ready?"

Greg's eyes fluttered. He didn't respond. "It hurt when it happened to me," the wolf continued, and Jason Funderburker let out a small dismayed croak. "Maybe he will not. He is favored. But I will stay with him, if it please you, bullfrog."

Wirt was not pleased. He fought and swung, raging against the bonds that were his own nonexistent body. The wolf lowered its eyes and curled up with a sigh behind Greg's small frame. Another ululating scream sounded from an invisible place in the woods, and then another, and another still. There was a sense of convergence, in this place washed in dying sunlight.

 _"Rorrup,"_ Jason Funderburker said again. _"Rorrup!"_ He patted at Greg's face one more time and then turned around, looking panicked. _"Rorrup! Rorrup!"_ He leapt into the middle of the glade, took a deep breath, and opened his mouth as wide as he could: _"RORRUP!"_

The croak echoed briefly in the trees. Jason looked around for a moment and then did it again. _"ROOORP!"_ Even the screams out in the wilderness seemed to fade back just a little in the face of the frog's deafening noise. _"RORRP! RORRRUUUP!"_ Wirt watched with his heart in his throat, clinging tight to the treebranch he knelt upon. There was an edge of desperation in the frog's voice: _"RORRUP! ROORUP! ROOOORRR–"_ There sounded a crash and a crunch, and the underbrush at the edge of the glade parted.

With blessed, beautiful, miracle timing, Dipper broke through from the trees into the sunlight, huffing, still with Edelwood oil smeared on his pale, scared face. Wirt felt the breath leave him. They still had a chance. The other young man took a second step forward, looking around; _"Roooorp!"_ Jason Funderburker cried, and leapt toward him.

"Jason? Is that you?" Dipper panted. The frog pointed urgently. "Is Greg h–?"

His expression went slack as he identified the small shape of the boy on the ground, and the wolf which was tucked in behind him. Dipper blanched, and he steadied his grip on his camping knife. "G-get away from him," he said, as loud and firm as he could manage. He took a sidling step forward.

The wolf seemed unimpressed; it narrowed its eyes a little, but said nothing and didn't move. "Get away from him," Dipper repeated. "Don't hurt him, he – I'm the one who helped kill the other wolves, not him, he –" He took another step forward, eyes flickering over and over between the wolf and the child that it guarded. The animal's hackles raised slightly. Dipper choked. "Oh, God." He squinted in the declining light. "Is he…?"

Before their eyes, another rich green vine sprouted from the ground and creeped around Greg's ankle. Yet another had tenderly begun to edge about his neck, with bright red fruit hanging from its curl. Dipper's breathing grew deep and fast and he sprinted forward with an open-throated bellow: " _Mabel! Wirt! Someone! I found him!"_ Wirt wanted to weep for joy.

 _Thank you, thank you so much, you can do it, save him, please –_

But not a few yards from Greg's body, Dipper suddenly fell. He didn't trip, there was nothing to impede his movement, he just – dropped and skidded forward on his knees, slammed his fists into the ground, and let his head fall between his arms, almost supplicating. Jason Funderburker hopped in surprise; even the wolf drew backward a little, ears pricked. Wirt had only a view of Dipper's back, and couldn't see well – wasn't he going to reach for Greg? What was he doing?

More hollow moans sounded from the woods. Slowly, Dipper raised his head again. Wirt was going to go mad – what was he waiting for? _Get Greg out of there, grab him and go –_

But Dipper didn't seem all that intent on Greg anymore. He sat up, and his head fell to the side; he used one hand to push it back up where it belonged. Slowly, he raised his arms, examined his fingers at leisure, then got down on all fours and began crawling, jerky, like he had trouble coordinating his limbs, a bizarre and undignified act. The wolf's hackles went up, and up further, until he had approached within a few feet. It exposed its teeth and let out a snarl.

 _"You."_

Dipper responded, "Oh, _please,"_ and the sound of his voice was like slap in the face. It was flat, almost sneering. "I'm not here to stop you." Wirt felt as if he were falling down a hole.

"I've been told enough times not trust a word you say," the wolf growled. "Leave the rabbit alone,"

"Hey, hey." Dipper put up his hands in surrender. He sat down by Greg's feet, and finally Wirt could see his face again: run through with a thread of arrogance which had not been there before, and a wide, distorted smile that did not pair well with his subtle sly eyes. "I'm not even gonna get in your way! I'd just like to be here when it's over. That too much to ask?"

Wirt couldn't breathe. This wasn't happening, Dipper was – he was playing some sort of game, he was trying to lower the wolf's guard; that was all. He cast his mind around again to beg the trees to let him go, but they declined to answer him. With cheery familiarity, Dipper clapped Greg's leg; the vines around his body shivered and sprouted further. Greg fussed, and then drew tight in on himself. "You are an intruder here," the wolf uttered to past its bared teeth. "You do not have this world's interests in mind."

"What, you haven't heard the news?" Dipper kicked back and crossed his arms behind his head, still smiling, even through words that shouldn't have allowed him to. "It's all gonna be one big world soon, Fido. The kid and I are gonna have a lot to discuss when he's done, here." In the night-expectant shadows that grew across the ground every minute, Dipper seemed bigger – a rod in his spine, a square in his shoulders that brought to mind a predatory bird. His eyes were cold. Was this what real, true despair felt like? Dipper was Wirt's _friend._ He had put himself on the line in the confrontation with the wolves, he'd bandaged Beatrice's wounds, he – he'd slammed Wirt into a tree – no, no, they'd moved past that. What was wrong with him? Dipper tilted his head at the child on the ground and leaned in.

 _"Just give in, kid,"_ he hissed. _"Let it happen already."_

Greg whimpered.

In the following moment, several things took place at once. Wirt felt a kick like the drop off a roller coaster's peak, and suddenly the deepening colors in the glade grew brilliant, almost blinding in his vision. He was lifted again into the air, drawing backward, though he tried to reach out; Greg needed him, he couldn't go. _Don't let this happen!_ he begged. Over the silent sounds of his own anguish, a crunch sounded, and a small someone moved in the shadows behind Dipper. Sara. Sara had come. The other young man didn't appear to notice her, but Wirt did. Her eyes were wide, and he knew, without a doubt, what she had heard.

"What the hell is going on here?" she asked of him. Dipper stiffened where he sat. Either her voice was pitched high or its sound in Wirt's ears was warped by the distance as unseen hands dragged him further away. He scrabbled for purchase on the branches, but his strength was as imaginary as his self.

 _"Sara!"_ he tried to yell. _"Get him out of there, bring him back –"_ But she couldn't hear him, of course.

He tried one last time to look back to Greg, but his eye caught on Dipper instead. In seconds crystallized by swaying sunlight and clipped movements, the other boy's face seemed almost to crack – one moment self-satisfied and under control, the next overcome with horror, and as he looked back to Greg he very nearly dove away from the place where the boy lay.

The wolf slunk backward, switching its gaze between the players present in the glade. Dipper tried to turn to Sara, and her hand was moving toward her belt and another strawberry ripened on the vine and then –

Wirt could hold on no longer. With a mighty heave he was pulled away from it all, the scene moving rapidly from him and disappearing down the end of a closing tunnel of tree boughs with evening shadows wrapped around their wood. The sky was dashes of purple-red and the ground a substrate in brown, prismatic shades and rushing forms along his path backward. He could not see behind, he could not control his speed, he was going faster and faster and he squeezed his eyes shut to brace –

Then he slammed into something. It knocked his head back, took the air out of his lungs; his eyes snapped open and he sucked in the largest breath of his life, fresh and full and, unfortunately, tainted by liquid that had gathered at the back of his throat. He coughed, and past pained tears could only just perceive that he was in his body again, and the sun was in his eyes, and someone was with him.

"Wirt!" a voice wailed. Beatrice's face hovered a few inches above his own, with red-rimmed eyes and a hand on her mouth. His head was in her lap, and she was crying. Over… him? Absurd. Blankly, his gaze drifted past her, combed through the crooking tree branches far above and the black shapes of birds in the red sky. He felt so very heavy; the ground was so hard here. The trees had nothing to say anymore, not that he could hear. Everything seemed so _still._ Beatrice sobbed with relief, a breeze lifted the smell of sun-ripened leaves from the ground, and somewhere far away, a wolf howled and tangled its voice with that of the Edelwood in discordant harmony.

For just the few bare seconds before full memory and understanding returned him to the real world, Wirt was choked by the feeling that it might be the most beautiful evening he'd ever seen.

* * *

 **This is another chapter that had to be cut down for length. It's still a good 3000 words shorter than chapter 8 was, but covers much more ground, and I was only able to fit in about 3/4 of what I had planned before realizing how unwieldy it was growing. It's really a shame, I would have loved to fit it all in Unlucky Chapter 13. Maybe next multi-chapter fanfic. (lol THAT'S A JOKE, i'm never subjecting myself to this torture again)**


	14. Broken Things

14

"What the hell is going on here?"

The moment that Sara realized her hand had drifted to the handle of her father's pistol was so powerful as to almost overwhelm her comprehension of the terrible the scene unfolding before her, as she stepped out of the treeshadows at the edge of the clearing to confront the players there – the man, the boy, and the wolf, in the sun. She hadn't so much as touched the gun in days now, she'd hoped she might never have to again, and yet as Dipper recoiled, snapped to attention, and then pushed himself frantically away from the place where Greg lay, she was torn by certainty of what she needed to do, and horror at it. This was _Dipper._ Dipper, who had a pink nose and admirable forearms and loved his sister to bits and showed it unreservedly. Now that she could finally see his face, he looked exactly as she would have expected under any other circumstances: pale, frightened, aghast, all attributes appropriate to finding a wolf huddling with a lost child.

She knew better, though, and fought to keep that knowledge at the front of her mind as she took another step forward. She'd seen his easy body language and heard the scorn in his voice clear as day as he made the casual promise that he would not do anything to interfere with what was happening. Her fingers tightened around the pistol without her input. Sara felt swollen with righteous anger as she hissed, "Get away from him," but the command was redundant. Dipper was already sprawled on the ground several feet away from Greg and still moving, semi-supine, on his elbows. His eyes were locked on Greg with a look of horror, which he flicked up at Sara, begging for reassurance.

"I don't know," he babbled, and sawed his forearm across his brow as if to clean it. "I-I-I don't know w-what –" He raised a shaking hand to his face and buried it there. Sara swallowed her sympathy with great prejudice and turned toward Greg instead. The wolf tensed when they made eye contact; it had begun to edge backward when she entered their arena, but still seemed unwilling to leave the boy's side. Sara made a wide, aggressive step forward; it recoiled, and then howled.

"Go!" she cried over its din, and waved her left arm around. Her right stayed firmly on the gun. "Leave him alone!" The wolf stopped, and flattened its ears. It wasn't as large as the others had been, but its teeth were still sharp and its jaw was strong. The memory of its sister, barreling through the door of the shack down the sight of Sara's pistol, was still vivid enough to get lost in. She redoubled her efforts: _"Get_ _out of here!"_

The wolf growled, but took a step backward, and then another one to match Sara's advance. It slunk defensively next to the trunk of a tree, and she finally felt safe enough to drop to her knees in front of Greg. "Buddy?" she asked as calmly as possible. "Can you hear me, Greg?" It was really hard to gauge his reaction when she did not feel she could take her eyes off of the wild animal in front of her. Every downward glance was a bet she was staking her life on. She nudged him gently and got a weak, but encouraging response. "Alright, Greg, you're doing great, I just –" Still maintaining dead-on eye contact with the animal, she tried to pull Greg toward her, but he was tied down by vines. The vines, of course. Didn't Dipper have a knife? "Where's your knife?" she shot over her shoulder.

He fumbled his response, and it was very, very frustrating that he couldn't answer a simple question when she was _trying to save a small child from wolves and encroaching vegetation._ "I – I had it, I know I had it, I just –" She heard him begin to shuffle through the thin underbrush. The wolf took another step backward, and Sara used the opportunity to look over her shoulder. There was the knife, a few feet from her right foot. She reached backward with a blind, shaking, hand, and felt for it – blade, then handle. She grabbed it. "Go!" she cried at the wolf again. She needed to look at Greg in order to cut him free. "Please! Just _leave him alone!"_

The wolf blinked, and then astonishingly, it did as she asked and loped off into the fire-red woods. A chorus of night-voices chickered and yowled as it passed through the trees to disappearance. In its absence, Sara realized that her heart was pounding so hard in her ears that her head quaked, but there was no time to waste. She grabbed a fistful of vines, and slipped the camping knife underneath to slice them away. "Dipper!"

Shakily, he crawled up next to her, but that was not what she had wanted. "No." She shook her head and pointed at a tree several feet away. "No, Dipper, you stay back there."

He looked like she'd slapped him across the face. Something black was smeared on his jaw and his hands shook like an old man's. "Sara," he pleaded, "no, I swear, I don't, please – I don't remember, I don't know, it – that wasn't _me –"_

She had to tear her eyes away. His heartbreak was deeply apparent, and a hard, sick ache was settled in her gut. "I don't care," she lied, from a deep and authoritative place at the bottom of her throat that she had not known about before now. "If you want to help, stay where I can see you and keep an eye out for the wolf. I'm not giving this knife back to you." He looked stunned. "Do you understand?"

Just for a second, he searched her expression for a sign of tenderness or yield, but she had her face on lockdown. He blinked a few times and her stomach torqued in anguish, but he nodded mutely then and reversed until his back hit the tree she'd motioned to, and he dropped back down, wrapped his arms around his knees, and hunched over with a haunted look. Sara finally turned back to Greg to get her first really good view of him, and she couldn't help the dismayed sound that escaped her lungs as she did. The little boy was ashen and drawn, curled up in a tight ball and criss-crossed with lace-leaved strawberry vines. The creepers were weak but plentiful, and their fruit was succulent and ripe. The smell made her mouth water as she sliced them away. Red juice smooshed between her fingers.

In a few seconds, she slipped the knife through one of her belt loops and took Greg under his arms and lifted him into hers. "Oooh," she groaned as she struggled to stand. Dipper was immediately on his feet and gesturing to her; she shook her head at him with an edge of warning.

He said, "Please, Sara." His brown eyes were shadowed and desperate. "Let me carry him, I – I want you to see – I can go faster than you, we need to get him back –"

Once again, she said "No," and hupped Greg up on her hip as best she could. It wasn't easy; the kid was dead limp and only a foot shorter than her. "You're going to walk in front where I can see you and get us back to the others, okay? I'm not going to let you near Greg, so stop trying. I –" She swallowed. "I'm armed." Once again he winced in the face of her words, and equally she recoiled inside of herself for having to say them. "I _know_ you know why I'm doing this, Dipper. You and everything that just happened, we'll talk about it later. If you want to prove anything to me, just – do what I say."

Dipper stood in the center of the clearing with heaving shoulders and a look of maddened desperation. It occurred to Sara that she couldn't reach her gun without dropping Greg. Dipper had seventy pounds and nine inches on her; if he wanted to rush her there was no way she could stop him, and she didn't believe that he would do that, but she did sort of believe that he _could._ What little good faith she still had left was vindicated, however, as Dipper nodded and took a step backward.

"You're right," he croaked. "I'm –" He swallowed and moved toward the edge of the clearing, giving her and Greg a large berth as he did so. He placed a hand on a tree next to what looked like a game path leading back into the brush, and turned to look at her. The low sun caught his face, turning sheet-white to dying gold. "I'm so sorry –" He squeezed his eyes shut, waited a beat, shook his head, and then did exactly as she'd asked. He marched into the woods and cleared a path for her to follow.

The shade in the thick of the wilderness had grown much darker in the last several minutes since Sara left it. Long, lean, tiger-striped light sliced the trail ahead of her into disconcerting pieces, and somewhere nearby but invisible, the moaning wood-voices seemed to follow them closely. Dipper was a dark shape ten feet ahead, pushing aside and breaking branches as he went. Sara didn't make it very long with Greg on her hip; it hurt, and made her walk lopsided. She struggled to shift his limp body onto her back while ignoring the unsettlingly close noises from the forest. "Slow down a minute," she called to Dipper. He did, and she was gratified that he didn't offer to help her, a feeling followed immediately by despair that they had fallen so low that something like that was what she had left to be grateful for.

Finally, she straightened up with Greg's legs looped through her arms and his hands and head on her shoulders. "Alright," she said, and Dipper set out again. Greg's left hand bobbed near her cheek. When she passed through a band of sunlight, a wine-red gleam hit her eye. A red leaf on a black vine stuck from the end of Greg's sleeve and curled around his fingers, but she couldn't do anything right now to remove it.

Ahead, Dipper put a hand to his mouth and bellowed, _"MABEL!"_ much louder than Sara would have been able to. It sent birds to sky. He stopped, and Sara followed suit. An Edelwood scream went out, and then another – and then, not too terribly far away, a response:

 _"Dipper!"_ Sara's heart soared to hear Mabel's voice. _"Dipper! I'm back at the river! Where are you?"_

 _"We're coming!"_ Dipper started forward again, faster. _"I'm with Sara! We have Greg! Is everyone else there?"_

Mabel didn't answer the question, but cried, _"You found him?!"_ Even at a distance, the relief was audible. _"Is he okay?"_ Dipper was starting to pant, and didn't respond. _"Follow the sound of my voice!"_

There was another thing to be thankful for, actually: in their search for Greg they seemed to have walked mostly in circles, and not strayed far from their starting point. Mabel was somewhere north of them, and periodically sent out a loud _"This way!"_ which became louder and louder each time they heard it. Sara kept bouncing Greg up on her shoulders; her back hurt terribly, her arms burned, her brow was pasted with sweat. _Should have waited to bathe until afterward,_ she thought idly, and barked a dry laugh at herself.

"Hey –" Ahead, Dipper stopped with his eyes on the ground. Sara pulled up behind, not too close. Something neon green nearly glowed in a tiny dab of sunlight. An apple-flavored-candy wrapper. A few feet away sat another wrapper, this one purple. Dipper looked up. "Mabel?" he shouted.

"Dip!" she responded, this time so close she seemed just around the corner. Dipper turned left and pushed past a dense ocean spray and there they were – back at the tiny clearing that they had first set out from, now washed in pale blue and deep gold. Mabel had been perched tense on the edge of the boulder that rested there, and leapt to her feet as they tumbled in.

"Oh, thank God," she said, and rushed forward to hug her brother. "Wait. Aren't Wirt and Bea with you?" Dipper stammered that they'd thought they might be here. Sara shoved past both of them to crouch beneath the black-barked tree and lower Greg there as gently as her exhausted, cramping frame would allow. Her back seared as she finally released his weight. "Oh God –" Mabel saw, and stepped forward with wide eyes. "Is he –?"

"He's _alive,"_ Sara said, and put the back of her hand against Greg's cheek. He felt cold, or maybe she was overheated. "I don't know what –" Again she spied that black creeper that was caught up in Greg's left hand. She pulled back his sleeve to remove it, but found herself dumbfounded. She thought at first it might be a trick of the dimming light, but no – the little sprout was growing straight from the back of his forearm. Her heart sped even faster than where exertion had brought it. "What the hell…?"

Mabel dropped down next to her and put her hand over her mouth. She looked up at Sara, down at Greg, back to Sara. She mouthed silently for a second. "I don't know what…" Her head snapped up to her brother. "Dipper! What do we do?"

Dipper was torn. "I –" He'd already raised his hands in surrender when Sara intervened with a flat, "No. Not him."

Mabel blinked, once into the middle distance and then at Sara. "What?" she didn't sound concerned, just genuinely surprised.

"Dipper's going to stay over there." Sara pointed a shaking finger away from them. "Keep an eye on him, Mabel, he shouldn't make any sudden moves –"

"Wait, what?" Her voice was half-laughter for the absurdity of what she heard. "Are you kidding? What are you talking about?"

Dipper muttered, "She – she's right, I'm not –" He ran his hands through his hair. "I-I shouldn't be near Greg, I don't think…"

Again, Mabel asked, "What?" a lot less humorously this time. "What are you talking about? …Did something happen?" She was starting to look scared, and Sara wanted to explain, but where would she start? Her body ached and her heart raced and there was less light in the sky every minute and she felt buckled, suddenly, by self-doubt. It was _Dipper._ She trusted him, she _liked_ him, and she knew she hadn't misunderstood his words to the wolf, but – what if she had? It was so desperately hard to maintain the truth of something she didn't want to believe.

Sloppy, uneven footsteps were approaching from the direction Sara and Dipper had come. All three teenagers in the clearing looked up as the bushes parted, and two tall familiar figures entered. Wirt was pale and unsteady, and Beatrice was red-faced from supporting him around her shoulders. Sara stood up immediately. "Are you alright?"

Wirt did not answer her. His eyes honed in immediately on Greg, and he broke away from Beatrice to stumble forward. He dropped to his knees with a relieved sob and pressed his forehead to his brother's. "Oh, God, Greg…" Sara's heart snapped clean in half.

She turned to look toward Beatrice, hunkered down on the small ledge of rock where Mabel had been sitting when they arrived. Her elbows were on her lap and her face buried in her hands. Sara sat next to her and put a hand on her shoulder. "What happened?"

Beatrice's voice was frighteningly thin: "I thought he was _dying."_ Sara had never heard her so distraught, and drew her hand back again out of sudden feeling of invasiveness. "He just – _fell._ And I couldn't wake him up, I tried, I tried. I think it was five minutes but it felt like forever." She palmed her eye and looked up, scared or sheepish. Mabel was next to Wirt on the ground and trying to comfort him; Dipper, true to his word, stayed his distance, but looked deeply agitated. "I don't know what happened," Beatrice continued, and turned away again. "He wouldn't tell me anything except that we had to find Greg _right now_. Then we heard Dipper yell that you had him and we followed Mabel's voice until we got to a trail of candy wrappers that –"

"I left those!" Mabel offered helpfully from over Wirt's shoulder. "I left those so I could find my way back here."

Sara muttered, "Good thinking," but she was barely paying attention. A mourning howl shuddered in the distance; it seemed they should be used to hearing the awful noise by now, but tonight it seemed as terrible as it had the very first night, or even worse. Another scream seemed to pop up every other second, and they did not fade out, but doubled on each other in the repeating intervals of a horrifying canon. She shuddered and shuffled over to join Wirt and Mabel. Wirt was still leaned wordlessly over his brother, holding his hand, and Mabel kept a reassuring touch on his shoulder. Sara knelt as gently as she could in the space between Greg and the tree.

"Wirt," she murmured. He barely glanced up to her; his eyes were red-rimmed. She took a deep breath. "I – I don't know what's happening, but you should see –" She pulled back Greg's left sleeve, and the black vine unfurled as she did. Wirt stopped breathing. She wasn't sure what reaction she'd expected him to have, but it was not the grief-stricken non-surprise that he displayed. He reached out to touch the leaves on the vine with a shaking hand, and swallowed. The little boy writhed a little. A few more leaves, it seemed, were beginning to show from beneath Greg's collar.

"This is your fault," Wirt said emptily. For a second Sara thought he was talking to her and was struck with hurt and guilt, but he had already turned away. His eyes landed on Dipper, who still stood as far from the others as he could, and took yet a further step away when Wirt began to rise from the ground. His cloak fell around his shoulders as he turned, and closed around him like a door. "You let this happen."

Dipper swallowed without speaking, but Mabel came to his defense. "Don't be crazy." She put herself in front of her brother without hesitation. "Dipper didn't have anything to do with this, Wirt."

His voice was rich with heartsick, with a dangerous edge on it: "I was there. I _saw_ him." It dawned on Sara that Wirt was angry, angry in a way she had never seen. He got irritated and sad and scared and chagrined and sometimes he was outright happy, but fury was a face she'd never seen him put on before. As he started forward, she was struck by just how tall he was. "I heard you!" His pace increased and the cloak opened like wings in the slashed sunlight, and the distance between him and Mabel closed until Dipper stepped forward and pushed his sister out of the way. Wirt grabbed him by the shirt collar and shoved him backward against an elm; his head bounced off of the trunk and he hissed in pain. "I heard what you said to the wolf! You _let it happen!"_

Mabel grabbed Wirt's arm, but he shook her off. This, Sara decided, was too much. She began forward to intervene – she knew she could throw Wirt, she had used him for wrestling practice more times than she could count – but Beatrice stepped in front of her and Sara came up short. "Wirt, stop!" Beatrice went for his arm like Mabel had, but was more persistent in hanging on. "I'm serious!"

"So am I!" Wirt cried. His eyes were wide and terrified, and all the more frightening for it. He hadn't been half this upset when Dipper put his own life in danger on the first night they met. "I trusted you! I don't even know who you are –" He shook Dipper lightly and the other man wrapped his hands around his wrists to push him off. Mabel shouted for him to _let my brother go_ and Beatrice pulled again on Wirt's arm to collapse his hold and the sun fell dimmer and the noises out in the wood kept building on themselves, high and low and layered and –

Melodious. Sara lost her breath as she realized the tonal shift that had begun to take place in the air, from chaotic needful noise to something almost musical. It had no rhythm, but carried a tense, uncertain harmony that raised the hair on the back of her neck. She turned out into the trees and then back to the others; they had noticed too. Beatrice went still, and Wirt looked away to search for the sound.

Still in his grip, Dipper tried to push himself from the tree, then collapsed back. "I'm sorry," he gasped, voice almost lost in the encroaching music. Wirt looked at him again. Dipper laid his head against the trunk, swallowed, and closed his eyes. He was still holding Wirt's wrists, but no longer looked to be fighting. "I'm sorry," he repeated thickly. "I didn't mean for this to happen. I didn't realize I'd – I-I don't know what's wrong with me." The line was not delivered as the sort platitudinous admission of guilt that ends an argument; the shadows under his eyes were dark, and his face was a shaded by the exhaustion and fear of a seriously ill patient before a seemed frozen. Beatrice still hung onto his arm, but did not pull.

 _I should do something,_ Sara thought dumbly, but she didn't move. They'd all been so happy this morning. They'd eaten and bathed and their journey was almost over. How could everything have gone so wrong as to bring them back to fighting and anger and –?

Mabel gently uttered, "Oh my God," and lifted a hand to point.

In the last patch of sunlight at the base of the black tree, Greg lay atop a rich bed of green. Strawberry plants whipped from the ground before their eyes and split into curling creepers, blooming beautiful fruit and wrapping lovingly around the little boy's fingers and legs and neck. Sara started back immediately, but Wirt was preternaturally quick. He let go of Dipper as though they'd never had a quarrel and rushed to his brother's side. "Oh, Greg…" The developing song from the trees drew tighter with each new sprout, verging on disharmony. It was awful to listen to. Sara came up behind Wirt and in front of Mabel and Beatrice, and placed a hand on her throat. The edge of the child's jaw was lined in black – not above the skin, but below it, like ink ran inside his veins. It touched the backs of his hands, and from the pitchy strains sprouted new red leaves. Wirt's breath was fast and hard. "No, no, no…" Dipper lingered at the edges of their cluster, face flickering on and off between fear and – could it be satisfaction? It couldn't be. "Greg, no," Wirt whimpered again, and brushed his thumb along his brother's cheek. Greg's eyes fluttered open, just for a second; it could have been the evening light, but they seemed paler than their usual warm gray.

"Wirt," he murmured, and closed them again.

"Yes!" Wirt laughed away tears as he combed his brother's hair with his fingers. "Yes, Greg, it's me, I'm here. It's going to be okay."

Greg breathed a non-question, "Wha's happenin'," and rolled an eye back open. He saw his black-lined hand in front of him, with a leaf sprouting from his fingertip, and was afflicted with a look of mild concern. "…Oh. M' sorry, Wirt. I tried to make it stop, I didn' wan' you t' worry…" Wirt bowed his head and sobbed through another swell of song from the dark woods. Greg's eyes closed again.

"I don't understand what's happening." Mabel's hands were clapped over her mouth. "I don't understand, I don't understand –"

"They're – Edelwood leaves," Beatrice said. She took Greg's hand gently and then looked up to the black tree that they were gathered beneath. Its leaves were matching red, richer in the day's last light.

Sara's stomach curdled with fear. "He's not turning into a tree?" Beatrice shook her head in ignorance. "Oh, God..." Abject helplessness was the worst fear Sara had ever felt. Fighting wolves at least demanded self-sufficiency, but this was a train hurtling down a track they were all tied to. Sara closed her eyes to try and gather her thoughts and squeezed a few tears down her cheeks. She hadn't noticed she was crying. Everyone was. Shoulders uniformly shook in the circle where they knelt, and no one had any answers and no one knew what to do.

The minor harmony drew tighter, one part stepping up and another following after. Greg shuddered and rolled onto his side to violently cough; a few spittle-covered leaves came away on his hand and stuck to his chin, and he went limp again. Black seams of oil edged his ears and temples. Sara couldn't stand to watch this anymore and Beatrice seemed to feel the same. She stood up and stalked viciously away, turned three times in the clearing, and then screamed at the sky. The grating chorus swelled in excitement.

Wirt whispered, "It shouldn't have been this way."

Sara glanced up at him past welled tears. He had streaks down his face too, and some ghost of a smile on his lips – a bitterly regretful one, but a smile nonetheless. His eyes didn't leave Greg's closed lids. "I should have just let the trees have me when I was fifteen, you know? I should have given in and let myself burn and sent you off to live with Beatrice so at least today you'd be…" He wiped an arm across his face. "I shouldn't have let the Beast get to you back then," he choked, louder. Beatrice turned to look. "I should have been a better brother, I shouldn't have let things get this far, and I –" He took a fortifying breath. "I should have stopped this."

"Wirt, what are you talking about," Sara murmured, but he didn't listen to her. He stood up.

"It's just I didn't realize I could before right now," he fretted. "Greg, I-I'm so sorry, I didn't know. I should have never let you be scared and – and hurt, and changed –" He squeezed his eyes shut and turned away. Sara cast around to the others for a glimmer of understanding, and found none. Only Dipper, still apart from the rest of them, looked anything other than aghast. He had an inscrutably dark expression on, and tilted his head with suspicion.

Wirt raised his eyes, and he took a jerky step forward to stand between his brother and the woods at the edge of the clearing where the blackberry bramble was thick. Sara stood up to take his hand as he passed her, but let it fall again from her grasp. The night-song amplified further, and Greg convulsed again on the ground as a thick black creeper ran up around his hip, which Wirt saw from the corner of his eye, and bowed his head as he fought back a shudder. Beatrice stood at Sara's side, gripping her arm, whispering softly: _"Oh, Wirt…"_ He came to rest in the last place that the sun touched, a broad dusky band on the ground of a hue between gold and purple, and faced the opening shadows of the forest that stood as expansive as a hungry mouth.

He said, "Take me instead."

The chorale stepped up another key, one voice part at a time. At the opening to the thicket, Wirt's shape was halved by horizontal sunlight on one side and the deep shadow that it could not breach on the other. The thousand lost voices of a wild god doubled again in soaring crescendo, beautiful to hear, and terrible. He put out his hands, wrists up, as if asking to be cuffed. "Take me," he said again. "I'll do… I'll do anything." He squeezed his eyes shut.

The synchrony let a high note ring, and then fell abruptly quiet – not silent, but an intrigued _mezzo-piano_ with a murmur running underneath _._ Wirt's shoulders heaved, still holding out his arms in front of him. He spoke again, and the chorus went quieter still. "He's just a kid," he continued. "He doesn't understand any of this. I'll be better for you. _Please."_ Sara took a step backward, trying to see his face. His voice cracked. "I'll do whatever needs to be done, I'll – I'll be whatever you need me to be, just… just leave him alone.

"Let it be me."

The song drew ever lower, cut in and out with more distinct murmurs, almost that of a curious crowd. Wirt let his arms fall and dropped to his knees. His shoulders drew inward as he wrapped himself in a defeated hug. The murmur hushed and mumbled _diminuendo_ and then, with a sigh, blew itself out completely on a tiny breeze. It emptied the air to make room again for the thunderous silences of the brook running a few yards away, and the evening birds, and the heartbeat that pounded in Sara's temples. Her mouth was dead-dry. She looked around, but there was nothing to see, no clarity to glean. The last sunlight, finally, slipped low and disappeared from the ground, and the world that it left behind was still, pale blue. At her shoulder, Beatrice breathed loudly.

Sara swallowed, and opened her mouth, but then had second thoughts and waited to see if anything would happen. Wirt was a huddled dark mass above the ground. She began to say, "I think –"

Something wrapped around her wrist, and she gasped in pain.

Shouts went up suddenly from all over the clearing. Beatrice stumbled backward with an angry bark, and Mabel asked, "What the hell?..." Sara wrenched her arm upward and felt shallow rasps draw across her skin as she did. She spun around. From the ground all around them rose twisting, tangling dark shapes that sought out their legs and settled in thorny masses around their feet – blackberry brambles. Mabel leapt up and struggled to lift Greg away from the encroaching weeds. "Oh, God," Beatrice said, tiptoeing backward. Thorns dug into her ankles with every step. Sara bounded toward the center of the clearing nearer where Wirt was still crouched. "Wirt!" she cried out, but he didn't respond. She looked up. A thicket had built up in a circle around him, prickling vines sprouting to drape across his shoulders and legs. "Wirt!" This time he lifted his head. "Wirt, please, we have to leave!"

He turned to look at her. The gaze that met hers over his shoulder was not brown, but bright, blank blue.

Sara stumbled. She landed on her rear in a briarpatch and shouted in pain. Wirt stood up slowly, and as he did, the shadows of twilight seemed to rise to match him. He reached toward her, but the hand that he extended was striated by black color running under his skin. An ebon vine sprouted from a finger's tendon, and he drew back in on himself and lifted both hands before his empty eyes, as if he couldn't believe them. Sara stumbled back to her feet with thorns in her palms.

At the same time, two screams erupted. _"No!"_ Beatrice and Dipper both stood forward, the former horrified, the latter furious. Sara asked herself, _What the hell?,_ but her thoughts were steamrolled by Beatrice. "Wirt! No! You can't –" She started moving toward him, but Sara blocked her path.

"Stay away from him!" she cried. "You don't know what's –"

 _"Yes I do!"_ Beatrice wailed, and tried to tear past Sara. Sara squared her stance, dug in her heels, and caught the taller girl around the waist, who ran into the hold expecting to break free, but found herself unable to do so.

Sara commanded, "Stop!"

"Let me go! _This can't be happening!"_ Beatrice all but sobbed, struggling against the grip that restrained her. Sara heaved and sent Beatrice stumbling backward until she tripped on a vine and dropped to the ground. The redhead cupped her hands over her mouth and shook bodily. Sara felt as though she were underwater, slow and swimming and deaf. She looked back with great effort at the terrible black thing among the brambles, which had once been Wirt. Darkness ran like ink through paper up the cape it wore, and a magnificent, curling crown of antlers – branches? – unfurled around its ears. It was tall as a sundown shadow, and the blackberries that clung to its back and shoulders trailed and snapped as it stepped forward with clear intent on Greg. Sara's breath abandoned her. Mabel still knelt on the ground with the child's upper body on her lap, in a desiccated pile of dry leaves and shriveled fruit which had once been a strawberry patch. She clutched Greg in a futilely protective gesture as the creature from the thicket approached. When it put out a grasping hand, thorns sprung from the ground where its shadow fell, and crept toward them. Mabel writhed away from a vine that wrapped around her calf, and the commotion finally seemed enough to rouse Greg again. His brow creased a little, and when his eyes fluttered open, the creature stopped moving.

Greg looked across the dark clearing and the purpling sky and struggled to sit up, but when his eyes settled on the looming figure draped in briers, he too went still. Sara thought he would be scared, but a tilt of his head communicated only tired perplexity. He examined one of his hands, looked back up, and mumbled,

"…Wirt?"

The awful thing drew another step forward at the same moment that Sara realized the weight of her father's gun in her hand again. A gut-wrenching déja-vu blurred her vision as she leveled the pistol at the unrecognizable beast in the middle of the clearing, and undid the safety.

"Don't touch him," she wept, and all eyes landed on her.

Mabel whispered, "Sara –"

"Stay _away,_ " Sara took a step forward. The black thing withdrew. "Leave! Go! Whatever the hell you are, get _out!"_ Its eyes were void and cold; the blue narrowed within a ring of yellow, but the colors grew hard to distinguish through the tears in her eyes. She gasped, "I'm s-sorry Wirt, I'm so sorry, I – I don't understand this but I can't –" Crushing misery brought Sara almost to her knees, just for a moment; this was too many threats leveled at people she loved, too many altercations that clouded the goodness she thought they'd found here together. She bit down hard on her tongue, and swallowed. "I th-think you could hurt someone. I won't let anyone get hurt anymore, I – I will chase away every goddamn thing in this forest that thinks it can do whatever it wants to us –!" The last few words verged on screaming, but broke open in a sob instead.

The black beast, man or wild thing or otherwise, stepped backward further. It seemed, for a second, like a cornered animal, with scared flat eyes and the capacity to lash out. One last time, it craned its neck to look at Greg. The boy struggled to sit up, and as he met its gaze, the creature froze, and then settled slowly back. The edges of its mad eyes spoke of sad relief. It bowed its head, and as they watched, drew itself up to a monstrous height and turned away. The brambles that edged the clearing opened for it. It sent one glance backward and then fled soundlessly into the deep.

Sara watched it go, waited, failed to notice for minutes that she still had the weapon pointed at the place where it had stood. She let her arm drop. Every motion sent shockwaves through her body, and she had the feeling that there was nothing left inside of her anymore. She was as empty as an old bottle and just as useful. She turned around slowly to a smattering of dazed faces and shaking frames. Beatrice was still on the ground. Mabel held Greg so tightly to her that he couldn't stand, and Dipper stood stony-faced, either angry or devastated. They were all such _kids_ , she realized vividly, not adventurers or heroes, just children making a human chain to pass through the dark together. An hour's events had torn them apart, and now they were left like a bunch of broken things scattered across the forest floor. For the first time since their arrival, the night was silent. Crickets chirped and birds sang, and the breeze sighed with a sense of deep contentment. High above, the stars were coming out.

Sara dropped to the ground, heedless of the thorns. She placed the gun in the soil between her ankles and cried.

* * *

 **Aaaaahhhh I've been waiting for a year and a half to write this part**

 **To make up for this shorter-than-average chapter where, clearly, nothing of import happened, consider checking out the old story-related art I rediscovered on my Tumblr this afternoon, from back when I thought I had the gumption to represent this 100k+ word fic in comic form (SEVERELY mistaken). Kind of interesting to revisit some early concepts I had about where everything was going - and to remember just how damn goofy I originally intended this all to be (I say, wallowing belly-deep in melodrama).**

 **whiggitymacabee dot tumblr dot com / search/world-of-beasts+myart (I hate FFN's url filter so frikkin much)**


	15. Mind and Body

15

The spiritless creature fled into the sleeping heart of the woods, and the wolf followed him there.

He didn't know where his path led. The forest was dense and dark; thickets snagged at his arms and face and black oil spilled from the lesions they opened, and from each fallen drop sprung a dense and whorling bramble to mark where he had passed. The wretched and muddled thoughts that thrashed behind his eyes took the form of corrupting phosphor blooms in his vision, a blinding overlay on the moon-dashed woodland, but it hardly mattered that he couldn't see where he was going; his direction changed a dozen times over as he skirted the edges of moonlight wherever it lay, not of his own accord, but in the way of water flowing where water has already been. He covered a dozen feet in a single step, distance he could hardly control nor comprehend, and with each stride, his surroundings loomed dizzyingly close and then slipped away again at speed on a track of shadows. His arms trailed for yards behind him and his feet were embedded deep in the earth. He was vast and meager and as thin as a piece of paper, and when he tried to cry out in confused fear, nothing left his mouth, but the wind howled down the lowlands for him and harried the chattering leaves that still clung to their branches. Thick trunks and black stony outcroppings loomed to his right, to his left, ahead and then to the side of him as he zig-zagged, changed his mind, spun to find another path – where? He had no one to return to, nowhere to go but deeper inward. The earth bowed and sighed at his approach, and the moon shone its sweet approval, and hundreds of thousands of trees reached out gently to welcome him home.

Finally, scared and exhausted beyond wit, he slowed and came to a quiet place in a walnut grove where every living thing was somnolent, and he hid himself there within a hollow tree. It was quiet inside, dark and cool like soil, and he closed his eyes to escape from himself. The forest was immediate and ethereal, present in his awareness whether he sought to block it out or not – and he did seek that. He covered his eyes and plugged his ears with coiling vines and brittle grass, and curled as small as a seed within the heartwood, seeking sleep which would not come.

The she-wolf was drawing nearer. He couldn't not see her approach. Though his eyes were closed and his self concealed, he still knew the arc of the moon in the sky, and the direction of the clouds. A breeze that touched a holly branch sent shivers up his spine. _I don't want this,_ he begged creation, but creation had never asked his permission. The wolf entered the walnut grove with moonlight shining dully off of her gray back. She paused to sniff at a brier that expanded, spiderlike, across the ground in all directions, and then turned her bright keen gaze upward.

"You must come out," she said to the grove at large. "There is work to finish."

If the beast made no response, maybe he could convince the world he didn't exist. If he slipped away into his vision of layered shadows and piping birds and rustling leaves, and never came back out, maybe it would become true.

The wolf waited. She sat and tucked her tail neatly around her paws, looked about the grove expectantly with perked ears, and then lay down with her head on her paws. A rustling commotion rose in the leaves of the tree to her left, but the wolf paid it no mind, even when a pale form appeared in the space between the branches and spread its wings grandly to announce its arrival.

"I thought you'd be here," said the white crow.

The wolf made no response. She breathed deeply in and out again, eyes skipping evenly between the trees before her. "You're no longer obligated to involve yourself in this," the crow continued. "We're all very thankful for your pack's service in keeping things running here for the last few years, very sorry for your loss, etcetera, etcetera. Now go back to hunting rabbits like a good dog."

"I will not," the wolf uttered, still staring straight ahead. The crow seemed to roll its eyes.

"There's the problem with you pack animals." It jumped a branch lower, and the creature of the woods felt the limb bow under its slight weight. "Your loyalty is to the point of absurdity. The Edelwood didn't want you when you were helping to keep it alive and it certainly doesn't want you now that it's found someone better." When the wolf continued to have no response, the crow softened its tone, just a little: "Is this really what your sisters would have wanted for you?"

"You hardly knew my sisters." The wolf's eyes drifted closed in a leisurely blink. "You are as much of a come-lately interloper in this world's affairs as your brother. I will not listen to you."

The crow bristled. "I could hardly be less like that insufferably-symmetrical little egomaniac! Your ill-informed comparison confirms to me that you have no understanding of what I aim to accomplish."

"I do not care." The wolf extended her front legs a little further, switched her tail from one side of her body to the other. "I have business with our new caretaker. Fly away from this place and take your meddling sibling with you, demon. Tell him we will not be subject to his plans."

Silence fell in the grove again. The crow did not speak for a moment, but regarded the wolf on the ground with one eye, rendered cold and black as pitch in the half-light. "You have no idea what damage Bill is going to do," it finally said, and it sounded rather sad. "This place – what remains of your Unknown – may be at ground zero, but reality in all its forms is at stake. My vested interest is in not existing under the thumb of a vainglorious trine and his frankly _textbook_ youngest-sibling complex, and so should yours be. And if I could simply take him home with me, I would have _done_ it already," it added hotly. The wolf shot it a scoffing glance. "Until this mess is all sorted out, I'm as trapped here as anyone else."

The wolf snipped, "Then you have no power _and_ no clear allegiance. I am right to reject your interference in favor of a caretaker with both." The crow sulked, but when the wolf failed to speak further and allow it the opportunity to reassert itself, it eventually perked back up, turning its head around the clearing with interest.

"He's not going to join you if you don't give him a good reason," observed the bird.

"He will join me." The wolf was self-assured. "He must."

"Not everyone is so enamored with an eternity of servitude to an unfathomable dark force as you are." The wolf narrowed her eyes, and the crow sighed and lifted its gaze. "Come out now, little one," it called into the grove, taking wing to fly in a small circle below the level of the branches. "This ungrateful animal is right. You have business to attend to."

Somewhere in the underground of his mind, the lost creature realized they were talking to him, had been talking about him; he'd forgotten for a few moments that he existed, and the reminder pulled on him like a fishhook. He turned back in on himself in the hope of disappearing again. The crow landed in the center of the grove and turned its head to the sky, tilted one way and then the other.

"I'm sure you're unhappy," it said. The black creature heard its exasperated words through every bark-crack for a dozen yards. "And I think you must be very… confused. You're only a little one, and the woods are very big from down here on the ground. But you must understand that you've accepted a certain responsibility. This is your forest now, and it needs your direction." The bird turned and made eye contact with the wolf, still laying behind it. It added, "You may be the only one who can keep your friends and brother safe anymore, you know." A twisted splinter hit the hidden beast's mind; _brother._ "I can only imagine the consequences should you still be in hiding when he needs you. Think about that, hmm?"

Though the desire remained that he should take root in the earth and never move again, the words lit a small fire at the back of the scared beast's mind, and in its light, he couldn't help turning his attention more intentionally outward. Somewhere far away, he felt a tug on his perception – a familiar weight against the ground, the exhausted echo of a small sad voice. _Brother._ His heart sped, and the trees grew excited in response. They whispered the message among themselves: _Brother. Brother!_

The wolf lifted her head to listen. The crow spread its wings and ruffled its feathers. "I imagine it's pleasant to have a sibling you can stand the company of," it called over the rustling leaves and creaking limbs. "Won't you do right by him?" The susurration's cadence grew more agitated; wind mussed the crow's tailfeathers. It took a hopping step backward. "Yes, I am sorry for your suffering, but your feelings really no longer matter. The universe-machine beneath the old man's home is ready to shatter into pieces. I know what weary things crowns are, but there's work to be done here that only you can do!" The wind blew in stronger for a second, as if to whisk the bird away. It jumped, caught the air, and dropped down again. "Well, I know you can hear me, so it's time to listen! The lives of those you love may end, and it will be your fault! So what are you going to do with yourself?" The trees of the grove groaned and bent in the clear-sky gale.

The crow opened its mouth to speak again, but stopped then, because within the black silhouette of the largest, oldest tree in the grove, a shadow twisted and turned, and two great blue eyes opened within the mass of darkness there. The wolf immediately stood at attention, and the crow firmly closed its beak. The creature in the dark straightened, further and further upward, until his antlered crown was fitted among the bare tree branches that madly crisscrossed the moon-blushed sky. He blinked slowly, and extended his hands to look at them, and then looked up again.

An awed hush ran through the trees around and quickly extinguished itself, as if in expectation, but the crow quirked its head in momentary confusion, and the wolf pricked her ears and said for both of them, "But – this is the other one."

 _The other one._ The shadowed beast looked away, shamed. "It is, isn't it?" the crow said. It sounded fascinated, and took to the air so that it might land on a nearer branch. "All that fawning over the little one, and it wasn't even utilized! Well, stain my feathers." It seemed an odd mix of impressed and irritated. "I don't suppose it matters."

The wolf stared intently at the dark beast, who was too large to shrink back against the tree where he had been hiding, though he still tried to. She murmured, "No – it doesn't matter," but seemed absorbed by deep thought. She shook herself out of it and dropped her head and forelegs, genuflecting.

The crow watched her bow, and then turned to the antlered creature itself. "You're no master of mine," it said pointedly, "but I think we'll come to find ourselves – allies, I suppose. Thank you for joining us, by the way. I was really running out of things to say that might convince you to come out."

The black beast opened his mouth, but instead of words, wind blew in from the south and rippled the grass. The crow waited for it to pass. "The silent type, hmm?" It sounded doubtful. "Or perhaps just lacking in faculty. I really paid very little attention to the older boy, he seemed rather simple –"

The wolf interjected, "That's quite enough, bird," and straightened again. "I'll handle this. Fly away, now."

The crow sent her a hard glance, but did seem to agree it had done its part. "I'll leave you to your business," it conceded. "But I'll be watching, of course."

"Of course you will, you trustless kibitzer." The wolf kept a steady gaze on the creature until it spread its wings and soared away across the treetops, catching a moonbeam on its way so it shone brief and bright. When it was gone and silence was back at home between the trees, she once again leaned into a bow. "I apologize I could not make him leave sooner," she intoned. "I would not have preferred you should emerge to such scrutiny. Demons are naturally meddlesome creatures." The black beast had nothing to say. The wolf raised her head, and sat down. Her tail swept the ground and laid the grass low, once and then again; her gaze was cold, doggish yellow, but not without an edge of sympathy. "The Unknown is glad to have you, I can smell it in the air. I wish I could say I know the feeling but – the forest was only ever glad to be rid of me, in the end. It took four of us just to possess the Edelwood while we performed a caretaker's work. It was happy to abandon us once my sisters were gone."

He remembered her sisters, not only from through his own eyes, but now through the eyes of a dozen trees which had stood watch over their confrontation four days ago. A maple which kept silent lookout as the wolves filtered in to surround the shack in the morning; the beech they had all tried to escape into, before Beatrice fell; the elm which had loosened its roots from the soil and fallen to save his life, and which even now lay slowly dying while ants swarmed its trunk on their way to the carrion feast it kept trapped under its weight. The beast felt every one of those ants' feet upon his skin, and shuddered.

 _This isn't what I wanted,_ he thought. The wolf tilted her head, and her expression turned surprisingly soft. For a wolf.

"Your _want_ means nothing," she said forlornly. "If it weren't for your pack's presence in these woods, my sisters would still be with me. If I had what I _wanted,_ I would have torn out your littermate's throat when I had him at my mercy at sundown." The shadowed creature felt cold, but the wolf didn't sound angry – just terribly sad, in a matter-of-fact way. She looked away for a moment. "Well. These are the sorts of impulses we surrender forever, when we give ourselves to the earth. My tenure may be over, but my service is not, and whether I _want_ that makes no difference. So, as your servant, I will ask –" Her eyes were dusky when they met his. "What is your name, Pilgrim?"

It was a simple question. He was certain he should know the answer but, as if in the process of forgetting a dream…

 _I don't remember._

The wolf raised her snout in satisfaction. "This is good. It would only leave you confused. You have work to finish tonight. Are you ready?"

He wanted to ask, _What has to be done?_ but had no way to speak it aloud. Then he thought to press, _What was my name?_ but, again, he possessed no words. The panic of disability pinched his shoulders, and he began to curl around himself.

But the wolf cut off his self-pity. "No." She stepped forward, and he looked up. "No despair, little king. Not tonight. Follow me."

The wolf loped off into the trees and began to run, and the dark creature watched her go, just for a moment, before following behind.

Trees dashed alongside their path, slowly and then faster as they picked up speed. The air was cool and clean and full of the odors of sprouting mushrooms and rotting fiber and the condensation that moss releases into dry air, scents so rich he felt they almost offered him substance. The wolf at his side was a distinct dark shape in the understory, occasionally flashing through a pool of dense moonlight where he could not follow, and so shrank to the side until the light degraded again. His view of the stars which winked over and over again beyond the balding canopy was not limited by moon-shine and nearsightedness, but lay expansive and deep as the clearest desert night. He marveled, and seemed not to need to give his attention to his path as he did so; the forest drew one for him. In these new ears, a rich woodland madrigal played layered _aleatorio_ : late-season crickets for the lilting soprano; an owl singing alto harmony; cedars' steady, baritone rhythm. In flashes, he witnessed the forest through a million small pores in leaves both dead and alive, compacted against the mulchy ground or swaying in low branches. At his side, the wolf bounded over a fallen log and lifted her muzzle to howl, and he felt the small things of the forest shudder at the sound.

The black creature grew larger as he moved, mind and body alike – woodland and meadow passed them by and his stride lengthened and his sight expanded ever further outward. Beneath the earth, a deep lattice of tangled roots formed the taut netting that held up the world, and he ran his fingers through the soil to touch them as he passed above, like dipping a hand into still water. How far did they extend? He followed them out and out and found no end. He saw families of deer tiptoeing through the darkness, and raccoons making mischief on their neighbors. He saw ruined structures scattered between the trees, ghosts of the warm homes they'd once been, and silver rivers that meandered across mountains and cascaded down their basalt faces in dramatic falls. Grand firs carpeted the hills, their trunks thicker than two men could reach around fully and their weeping branches agelessly green. He had always thought himself to possess a poet's sense for the hidden nature of things, but this _was_ the hidden nature of things, and it was as dismaying as it was exhilarating. Over and over again he pulled back into himself from an expansion of mind that he'd not realized he had slipped into, and was equal parts thrilled with what he perceived on the outside, and appalled by the realization that his self was, in the end, as easily dissolvable as this. His outlines disappeared if he didn't pay close attention to them.

The wolf bounded down a hill and when he did the same, he was left momentarily airborne, just a meager thing flickering between the shadows that the trees cast. He shouted his voiceless absence in the world, and the south wind was happy to speak to the bending valley on his behalf. Wild breeze rocked the trees and kneaded the clouds around the moon. Then the trees parted, the land fell out in front of them at a sheer drop, and the moonswept wilderness opened before their eyes, dipped and swelled gently up to the crested western horizon.

The wolf drew to a stop at the edge, rearing briefly on her hind legs and letting out another long howl, but her caretaker kept going. He left the precipice behind stepped out over the valley below, striding in the shadow of a cloud that sailed across the moon. With every step his vision grew wider, grander in scope, and still ever more detailed. Curled-up ferns and crushed birds' eggs and the heat that rumbled under mountains and pebbles losing themselves to running water – he knew _all_ of it, the whole world at once, big and dark and beautiful. Patchworked into the western hills lay two grand cliffs, and below them, a little town, rustic and dark. It was Gravity Falls, he realized, right there the whole time, and he had been too bound within his body and mind before now to see how close it really was.

In curiosity, he slipped down and stepped up to the trees at the edge of the village. Nothing moved here. The lights were all out, and creeping bushes and young trees grew up against the empty businesses along Main Street, but a place outside of town thrummed with heat and life, and its energy pulled at his attention. He let the shadows carry him like a river, travelling parallel to the streets, alongside a branching neighborhood road that grew more and more rural until it eventually turned to dirt. Miles from town the trees grew sparse, and in their midst stood an old house with broken words on its roof and light in its windows. Something deep underground here hummed with unearthly energy, but somehow, he couldn't see what it was; it was a great blind spot under the earth.

The black caretaker came to rest at a distance, near the edge of the clearing. A girl huddled on the building's porch, her hair chin-length blonde, with a joint munched between the fingers of one hand and her face buried in the other. The front door opened to her right, and she exhaled thick white smoke.

"You gonna stay out here all night?" asked a gruff voice. She squeezed her eyes closed.

The caretaker thought he should be surprised to find others here, but he wasn't at all. He'd been sure of their presence from the moment he gave in to the brier, but hadn't known it until the question arose. In curiosity, he cast around and delved back into the slipstream made of the places where the moon could not touch. When he stepped out again it was to find himself looming over two sleeping forms, male and female, curled between the roots of a tree. The woman was heavily speckled, with visibly red hair even in the dark; the lanky man behind her rolled over, mumbling, and tried to wrap his arm around her waist. She elbowed him in the face without waking and curled back in around a heavy woodsman's axe held close to her body. The beast watched with detached fascination as they settled back into deep slumber. Their aspects were second-handedly familiar to him; once, he suspected, he'd been told their names.

Again, he fell back into the shadows. Somewhere not far away were hidden five more beating hearts, clustered near the banks of a steady brook, but as he drew nearer, he was struck with an unexpected sense of dangerous familiarity to them. These presences within the forest niggled his conscience, and rather than draw too close, he looked through the eyes of the bone-hearted Edelwood tree that stood in their midst. There was one large figure there, three smaller, one very smallest of all, every one of them dark and melancholy. He felt their warmth against the bramblethorns among which they rested, and heard weeping, and a whispered small voice:

 _"…have to find Wirt…"_

In the course of a second, the word struck as him as strange, then familiar, and then realization hit him like a lightning crack. He wasn't even near its source, but still wheeled back sharply, and the trees whipped in a flash breeze. That was it; that was the name. He was filled with immediate, sick dread and wanted to hear no more, but his ears were everywhere, and he could still perceive the piping sweet voice carried to him on curling blackberry vines _: "He's scared and lost and he needs us to find him again."_ Greg's speech was thin, but brave. _"He wouldn't give up on any of us."_

There was an agonizing pause before someone responded, _"I don't know if we can."_ The voice's resonance was high-pitched and distinct; Mabel. He remembered that name, he remembered all of them. How long had it been since he was sitting there among them, talking and laughing, with solid hands and only his own eyes to see out of? A century or merely hours. The Edelwood tree watched Mabel crawl over to console his brother; they all sat so far from one another, distrustful and hurt. _I'm here,_ the caretaker uttered despite himself, and a breeze raised goosebumps on his erstwhile companions' arms.

 _"Wirt's gone."_ A hunched form and a hollow tone; Sara was hidden in shadow, but he knew how she sat: back bent, chin on her knees. She had that voice on, the one of flat determination that she used to use when he was on the edge of panic about some math or science class. Her certainty was not set to express her faith in him this time, though. She sounded dead inside. _"That monster is what's left now, Greg. There's nothing for us to find."_

 _"No,"_ Beatrice whispered, voice echoing in her cupped hands _._ When she shuddered, the woodland creature felt it as though he held her in embrace. He buckled, shaking his head, as she insisted, _"No, no, no, that can't be right…"_

 _"But we have to try,"_ Greg insisted with a warp in his voice. _"We have to h-help…"_ He stopped briefly to gulp down the emotion in his throat, and turned his face up into the moonlight. There, he could finally be seen, and so clearly, but not touched, not protected or embraced or comforted. He needed his older brother but he couldn't be there and there was nothing anyone could do –

The beast could take no more. He wanted to reassure and hold, or run and hide, but in the end, he could do none of those things. He plunged deep into the earth in anguish and with the hope that the soil might muffle his senses, but when his brother's tears hit the ground it felt like they'd landed in the palm of his hand. He begged for the woods to take the tableau from him, and the trees that lay witness to the scene by the brook heard his command, and quietly, obediently, died.  
–

It was a long time before he felt strong enough to come back out.  
–

The caretaker unfurled again among the low branches and continued onward, strictly composed and more subdued than before. The stars were still bright in the moonlit sky and the air was fragrant and the forest welcoming to his every step, but he felt listless. There was a black thought in his shivering mind, elusive and frightful. He could not let that happen again. All would be well again when he managed to forget what he had found.

Something was crawling on his skin, and in an instant, he knew what it was. With a thought, he swept away into the dark and emerged into a place almost a full week's distance away, where a mass of rubble sat soaked in moonlight and rain. He regarded it as he passed it by. They'd stayed a night here, not so long ago, spent panicking and plotting. He was proud of how dispassionately he was able to acknowledge that sentimental history. He felt the heat of two composting masses of teeth and bones beneath the remnants of the shack; they did not need his help to become of the earth, but something else here did. He flowed into the clearing the once-cottage had opened up to, bisected now by the trunk of a gigantic, fallen elm. It was a beautiful tree; he placed a hand on its roots, and it respired at his touch.

He thought to himself, _I remember what you did for me,_ but the tree promised him it was nothing at all.

Halfway down the length of the trunk, a viney black thicket burst from beneath the tree's wooden girth. The Edelwood shoots had mostly subsumed the carcass underneath, but two enormous black paws still extended from the mess, as if in a revitalizing stretch. The caretaker drew up to that spot, examined it closely, and wondered for just a moment what he ought to do, when he was startled to hear –

 _So you've come,_ said the dead wolf beneath the tree.

The beast stood up straight again. He could feel the arrangement of the bones pressed into the earth here, but he had not expected them to still have a voice. _It took you a long time, rabbit. I have been waiting to grow for many days now._

The caretaker apologized. _I didn't know how to be this until tonight._

 _No matter._ The leaves on the vines hushed in the night air. _It is good you have come. Tend me._

Was that was he was supposed to do? The Edelwood sprouting from her body was young and tender, and frustrated by its own stunted growth, he could feel that. In curiosity, he reached out to touch its leaves, and they gratefully rose to meet his contact.

He closed his eyes. The tree's roots were enmeshed in fur and flesh, stunted and pressing against the elmwood density above. When he raised his wooden arms experimentally, the vines shuddered and twisted together, thickening, tightening into knotted, cracked bark. Its roots shot outward and broke through the earth to grow along the ground. The wolf's extended paws were swallowed by budding leaves. The beast stepped backward and watched. The Edelwood writhed and bent and cracked, its trunk growing crooked to accommodate the fallen tree which impeded its normal growth. More roots rose and wrapped around the elm, securing the two plants to one another. A multitude of branches spread outward, split, spread, split again, fractaling smaller and smaller in silhouette against the indigo sky. Finally, the tree made a last stretch outward and settled as a malformed and satisfied thing. A large knob in the wood had the lupine look of a muzzle.

He could feel the wolf sigh. _Thank you, rabbit,_ she said. _It was so hard to keep existing that way._

He thought to himself, _I'm sorry._

 _I think I will sleep now,_ the wolf continued, and indeed, he felt the tree's roots churn in the earth, as if preparing it for comfort. _I am not glad to be dead for your sake, but if I must, this is a good and rich place to grow._ Another deep, canine sigh. _Good night, then, Pilgrim. Look after of my sister while I am gone. You know, if you would plant her next to me someday, I think that would be pleasing._

He thought that he would, and her roots settled into place among her bones, and the tree quieted.

The Pilgrim turned and listened to the wind that pooled in the hollows of the trees, how it echoed uniquely against different woods. A special ring caught his ear, and he followed a restless eastward path until he came across a set of train tracks passing straight through his forest. He followed them along a meandering stream, up the hills, down the gorge, until he came to a place in the moonlight where two benches sat back-to-back on a cracked platform, wrapped in black vines. The old men here in their seats nodded drowsily, heads nodding and snouts twitching.

He knew what to do this time. He knew himself to be made of cold oil, and that he should not care either way, but a small voice inside of him – it sounded a lot like his brother's – was glad the old men were sleeping. It would be easier this way. The Edelwood vines eagerly recognized his presence as he drew nearer, and with a single thought from him they began to grow again for the first time in weeks. Red leaves burst out through dry buds and lianas spiraled out and upward along tweed-clad legs and wrought iron alike. The beast watched from a distance, mollified at the process, until the goat facing away from the tracks, who held an umbrella, snored loudly once and then jolted suddenly awake.

"Hmm! Hrrm. Oh, my." Jim Rat looked to and fro, sounding bemused. "Well, God blind me, John, will you look at that?"

His brother let out a wheeze, and similarly startled himself awake. "Hrrm. Hmm! What are you waking me for, you unprofitable livestock?" But Jim shook his head.

He said, "Would you imagine, John, the trees are growing again," and John looked around to see that it was true. The Edelwood vines which bound the men to their seats wrapped further and faster along their arms and toward their necks, as if to make up for lost time. They creaked in their haste.

The observation gave John Owl pause. "Mmn. For the first time, you may be right, Jim." He looked mildly perturbed, and tested the creepers which bound his arms. "Damnation. Well, this is all happening rather quickly, innit?"

"I can't disagree, brother, though I was beginning to grow rather bored, just sitting here." Jim looked upward and squinted through the holes in his umbrella. "I suppose the powers that be must have finally sorted themselves out, eh? I wonder who's gotten things up and running again."

"One of those awful brats we saw pass through here a day or two back, I'm sure," grunted John Owl, who, with the limited mobility he still retained, picked his paper from the bench next to him and flipped it open so that he could squint at the type in the dark of night. "Who else could it be? I knew they were trouble, Jim, I told you and you didn't listen for a moment."

"What sort of child isn't up to some manner of no-good?" Jim asked breezily. The wood around his horns spiraled thicker and thicker upward and split into a bough. "Not us at that age, certainly. Ah, John," he sighed, and tipped his umbrella pensively. "I am going to miss the view."

John's scowl deepened. "I am going to miss my _train_ if you don't shut up and let me grow."

"Not going to miss you, though," Jim japed, and then glanced over his shoulder to see if had raised a reaction from his brother. Twisting vines collared him heavily beneath his jaw. He could not move his head. "Ah, John, we both know I was always a terrible liar. I do love you, you know."

John Owl sneered to move his mouth from encroaching growth, just enough to answer, "Of course I know that, you maudlin oaf," before the Edelwood took his voice away from him. The two old men were enclosed in oily wood, and their trees sprouted up and upward, roots exposed on the concrete platform. Their branches bowed downward, heavy and tired, two symmetrical trees sprouting from the same place on the bench which sat half-hidden beneath their stumps. From one Edelwood's branches hung an open umbrella. In the other's was draped a fluttering newspaper.

The caretaker was almost finished. He hadn't known before that he even had an end goal, but it was near completion, he was certain of that, and there wasn't far yet to go. He followed the train tracks westward until the scent of woodsmoke reached him, and he slowed one last time to find its origin. A glow fell across the forest floor ahead, and when he drew close around the foliage blocking his view, found himself standing at the open face of the little half-house by the side of the permanent way, with its cut-off kitchen and the Edelwood tree growing through the back wall.

The house was more crowded than the last time he'd been there. The Mother of Tree Roots still slumbered in her Edelwood bed, but two new figures had joined her tonight. A large, rodent-like man in muddy sneakers and a windbreaker was curled in the corner of the room across from the kitchen, snoring contentedly with his wrists and ankles bound and a full selection of winter roots and vegetables set around him, a bizarre _mise en place_. A small girl, no older than five, also napped, draped against the mass of roots in the wall. Her feet were delicately cloven and her back was thick with sprouting foliage. The caretaker tilted his head at the both of them, thinking of what came next.

"So, you did it, boy."

The creature of the woods turned to look toward the fire, where the black cat was curled with his feet tucked neatly underneath his body. The animal blinked slowly as stand-in for a proper greeting. "I thought I heard somethin' in the wind near sundown, speakin' of a terrible thing takin' place. Seems I was right 'bout what I heard. Would you just look at you now?" Its yellow eyes, half-lidded and keenly knowledgeable, cast up and down his form. "It's a shame, child. You woulda had a long an' happy life if it hadn't come to this."

The caretaker raised his head, but was not able to respond before the Mother of Tree Roots began to rouse and cough. Her eyes opened bright, gummy green in the mess of soil and broken plaster, and when she grumbled, it rattled the roof tiles. The little girl leaning on her leg was woken as the old woman began to stir, and scrabbled sleepily to her feet.

"Are you getting hungry, Momma?" she mumbled, rubbing at her eyes. "I can start to make dinner, if you tell me how to gut the –"

But the woman put out an enormous brown hand, and covered the small girl's arm with it. "Shh, child," she rasped, her voice as pale and papery as birch bark. The girl wrapped both her hands around one of the woman's fingers, which were thick as fence posts. "Plans have changed. We have a visitor. You were right, Enoch," the Mother of Tree Roots added, and the cat sent her a sidelong glance. "Things did come to a head out there tonight, it seems. I was loath to believe your word after you let those children out of here with my food."

"I am a trickster, Mother, not a liar," purred the cat.

The little girl looked very confused. "Where is –?" she began to ask, eyes drifting toward the threshold of the house, but the Mother of Tree Roots reached out a huge, slow hand and pulled her attention back to her.

"We've talked about this, child," the old woman said. She sat up further, white hair tumbling down her shoulders as she pulled herself as far from the wall as she was capable. It seemed to hurt her to move, and she sat back again with a suppressed groan. "You know it's a missing beast who's supposed to take care of trees like me. He's finally returned." A dark look crossed the child's face. "Don't pout. I told you this day would come."

"But not _today_ ," said the girl, and stomped her little deer-foot. It clacked on the wooden floor. "We were going to have dinner."

"The best-laid plans and tastiest dinners are still subject to the whims of the woods," said the Mother of Tree Roots.

"But…" The child sat down, looking bewildered.

The old woman put a gentle finger out to lift her daughter's chin, coughed violently for a moment, and then spoke again. "Someday, those weeds on your back will be ready to sprout, too. Just plant yourself in the ground and the caretaker will guide you home to me." The child wiped her eyes on her mother's calloused thumb. It was a strange experience, for the beast, to be spoken of like an inevitability, not least because he suddenly felt quite wrong-footed. Bringing the old and dead to their ends was one thing, but when he tried to envision helping a little girl to fade into the earth, he could only think of his brother's ashen face, framed by black wood and snow. He struggled to put it aside. "I do hope you won't make that choice for a long while, though," the old woman continued, and as she did, the tree that held her in its roots began to creak and swell. Its oil flowed, and its branches widened above the roof of the house. The little girl clung to her mother's hand, aghast. "You still have a lot of growing to do, little one, and it wouldn't do to give up on that so soon. These woods will still need a proper witch after I'm gone, you know."

"No, no, Momma," the girl insisted, and began to pull on the sprouting vines as they extended across the floor. "No! I want you to stay here. Show me how to cook up the gopher-man I found and – and how to throw bones, and weave turtle-baskets, l-like you promised before I got lost –!" She mightily swallowed her tears as the vines grew faster and thicker than she could control.

"Ah, child." The witch sighed as her hair caught up in the twisting bark. "You'll be better off without this wretched old body of mine to look after, won't you?"

"I like your wretched old body," sobbed the little girl. The old woman gave her a fond look and pulled her into a hug, just before the black bark swept fully up her form. The little girl squeezed hard and long, and opened her eyes again to find herself with her arms wrapped around a low branch.

The Edelwood settled around her and went quiet. The child stumbled back from the base of the tree, and looked up to the crumbling roof and the small bit of sky to see beyond. Her face crumpled. She began to cry, and dropped to the ground in front of the fire with her hands over her eyes. The cat glanced up at the caretaker as her open-throated wails grew louder and louder, enough so that the man in the far corner of the house finally woke, blinking bemusedly in the dim firelight.

" _Mmmn._ Whoa… doods, I was having a heckuva dream, there." He yawned widely and rubbed his face. "I'm already forgetting it. Ha, that's so like me! So, is dinner ready yet like you guys s– wait, why'm I tied up? …Why're you cryin', 'Roots?"

The man hadn't noticed the beast outside of the house either, and the beast preferred that he would not. He retreated into the shadows, preparing to leave, but the cat stood and trotted out to follow him, ducking neatly beneath the strange man's clumsy attempts to reach the girl on his bound hands and knees. The black feline crossed the threshold into the barely-lit woods, and its appearance in the night turned as dark as the caretaker's.

"You handled that heartbreakin' scene mighty well," drawled the cat as it drew up next to him among the trees. "A bit too well for the boy I remember stumblin' through Pottsfield years back, with two left feet and a terrible fear o' skeletons, dancin' or not. How're you doin', son?"

He felt sick, torn between obligation and self-loathing. _I had to do it,_ he thought. _It's my job._

The cat tipped his head. "It is that, but you'll do yourself wrong if you think you can't recognize that job as a terrible one. It's alright to hurt over it."

What good would that accomplish? Mourning for every lost life would leave him a wretch. The wolf had been right; a name, an ego, a self, would only cause him pain. But though he'd said nothing, the cat sighed to acknowledge his point. "I'm sure it's a mighty compellin' self-conception to think so, child, but you're no wolf. Omniscience don't mean havin' to turn yourself into someone who's terrible at parties. I would know." It winked, but grew solemn when the caretaker failed to respond. "Look, boy. Death walks at your heels from here on out, and that's if people don't think you the Reaper Himself. That's a hard thing to swallow. The Beast you once met started out not too unlike y'self, a long time ago." When he heard that, the caretaker turned down sharply to the little cat, who gave him a significant look. "Sure, I knew him then, same as I know you now. He also thought he could numb himself to the faces o' the hopeless and dyin', once upon a time. Thought he didn't need to feel sadness. You know what he accomplished doin' that?" It sounded like a rhetorical question, but the cat waited a long time to finish the thought, until the caretaker shook his head. "Jus' turned mean. Made himself so hollow he couldn't even contain his damned soul any longer, 'cept in that lantern. You remember." He did. "Joy in others' sufferin' is the furthest thing from mournin', but is that the sort of monster you'd like to become?"

The caretaker stood silent, listening to the sound of the small child crying in the broken cottage behind him. The cat regarded him with the air of a point having been triumphantly made. "Heck though, I can't tell you how to live your life," it said finally, and licked a paw and pulled it down over its ear. "But I can give you my two cents. Let yourself be as wistful as you need, young Pilgrim. Remember your name, an' your loves, and the things you left behind. In a hundred years, they'll be the most human part of you that's left."

Somewhere a dozen miles away, a wolf's howl went up over the treetops, and a startled owl took off across the understory. The beast raised his head to follow the noise, and the cat did the same. "Mama Wolf's callin' you home, it seems," it drawled when the keening died down. "She'll do you right in most respects, son, but predators don't feel pain the same as a person. Don't let her kill that soft heart in you." It stood up, tail pin-straight in the air behind it. "Now, if y' don't mind. I have a sad child to purr on." It stalked away toward the light of the half-house beyond the trees, and the beast watched it go. He felt the warm contentment of the Edelwood growing through the cottage's walls, and on an impulse, stepped forward just enough to see the child, the man, and the cat, all clustered closely on the floor of what had once been a home.

The tree sat behind them in the wall, black and vital. Its face was not open-mouthed and despairing, but rather serene, not unlike that of an old woman who had fallen peacefully asleep.  
–

He found the wolf, in the end, in the place where he had left her, on the ledge of a rolling hill which stood over the valley leading toward Gravity Falls. She was curled on the ground in a patch of red clover, but opened her eyes and raised her head as he stepped as close to the edge as the moonlight would let him.

"Welcome back," she said, and bowed and stretched with a wide yawn. "You have been gone for a long time."

 _I had a lot to do,_ he thought. She seemed very pleased at that.

"You learn quickly," she said, and loped over to sit down at his side. "You finished tending to the trees that we could not finish?" He nodded, and she gave him a sidelong glance. "…My sister's, too?"

His eyes stayed on the far distance for a moment. _She asked if I would bury you next to her someday._

The wolf dipped her muzzle. "That would please me. Will you?"

 _If I'm here when you die._

"You will be," the wolf promised, as the valley wind stirred the ruff of her fur. "You will be here long after I'm gone, and after Cipher has been banished and the world made bustling and proper again. You will watch the trees and grow the Edelwood and turn the season a hundred times over." She closed her eyes and smelled the air. "What a magnificent eternity lies ahead of you."

The Pilgrim, too, closed his eyes, and in his self felt the whole of the earth, growing and cycling. He felt the roots, the soil, the nightcrawlers and mushrooms and simple plants, a thousand lifetimes passing into and out of the woods every second, living and dying and living and dying and living again almost without distinction. He smelled the stink of smoke on the breath of a blonde girl, arguing with an old man in the light of an open doorway; he felt the cut in his flesh when a lumberjack's axeblade dug idly into the soil, knocked about by a hand in restless sleep. He felt the impact of a large man's feet as he stepped out into the night, worried, with ropes dangling from his wrists and a crying child perched atop his shoulders, and somewhere in the midst of the wilderness, he still felt the grove of dead trees where he had hidden five names which hurt too badly to be remembered.

This world was such a shabby thing, all tattered edges and a center full of holes held closed by foreign threads, but it was still his. He knew he should love it, but it was all but impossible to tell where it began and he ended anymore.

He lied to himself, _I'm glad I chose this,_ because tonight, the things he said often seemed to become true.

The wind blew and the trees grew and the moon sat still in the sky.

The wolf smiled.

–

Each time Greg woke that night – and he woke many times – it was in a state of confused panic, haunted by the idea that he had betrayed a deep and heartfelt principle in himself for having fallen asleep at all. He didn't like feeling this way, full of frustration and the sense of creeping futility, but it was so hard to stay calm when nobody would _listen_ to him. Sara and Mabel had been so concerned with checking him over after he woke up, but what the heck were they so worried about him for? Leaves were leaves, and he'd shook them all off but nobody believed him, they wanted to check for themselves. Wirt was the one who needed help; Wirt was the one who was _gone._

It had taken the older kids hours to get him to quiet the first time; no matter how much sense he made, they didn't seem to understand. Straightaway he said they needed to go find him, but everyone just sent around big scared looks; they thought he was being naïve, but thinking that sort of thing didn't accomplish anything at all. _Maybe,_ they said, then _Later, tomorrow, I don't know._ Greg already knew. Why didn't they?

Now his slumber was fitful and messy, because every time he dreamed, it was the same dream about being at home in the living room, with Wirt sitting on the couch across from him. Greg would see him there and find himself flooded with abject relief that the world was actually alright; he couldn't, in fact, remember anymore what had even had him upset. He would run over to jump on the sofa and hug his brother, and Wirt would squawk and tell him to get off his arm. Greg would laugh and laugh and laugh for joy until he laughed himself awake, and being awake was a terribly hard thing to grasp, because how did it make sense that the crazy world of dreams was the place where Wirt was safe and sound, and boring old reality was where he was gone? He knew he shouldn't be sleeping while Wirt was in danger, but he was so very tired, so he squirmed and whimpered and struggled to figure out what was real, and eventually he fell back asleep into a place where things were better.

This time in the dream, he and Wirt went into the kitchen together. Greg decided to make lunch, and pulled out all the ingredients, and turned to ask if Wirt wanted his sandwich with peanut butter and jelly or peanut butter and honey. Wirt wasn't there, though. The thing sitting in his brother's place at the breakfast bar was huge and black, and its eyes were terrible and full of light. It looked straight at him, and Greg dropped his butter knife.

 _"Wirt!"_ In the waking world, the words came out of him in a rush, and he sat straight up in the dark, beneath the purple sky and the black-and-blue that colored the shaded places under the trees. He looked around in a panic to identify the others, laying or sitting in the places nobody had really moved from since sundown. He saw them stir when he yelled. "Wirt, everyone! We have to find Wirt! We can't sleep, we – we have to…" Someone let out a sharp little sigh; it sounded like Dipper. Nobody else did anything at all except for Mabel, who took him by the arm and ran her fingers through his hair until he laid down next to her. He was still agitated, but the adrenaline was draining away, and weight settled back in under his eyes and made them heavy. Jason Funderburker hopped up next to him and whispered, _"Rorrp,"_ and Greg knew he was trying to help, but it really wasn't what he wanted to hear right now.

"Tomorrow, buddy," Mabel whispered. "We can't do anything when it's dark. You just gotta be patient, alright? Get as much sleep as you can."

Patience. Didn't she understand that there is no such thing as patience when the most important person in the world is in terrible danger? He fidgeted and rolled onto his side, intending to come up with bulletproof arguments for why Mabel was wrong, but she kept brushing her fingers along his scalp and it was dreadfully hard to focus. When his eyelids drooped, it felt sort of pointless to force them back open, because it was equally dark outside his lids as inside. He couldn't even hold his anger in his chest very well. It took so much work.

 _We'll set up search parties,_ he determined as he started to spiral out of awareness again. _Wirt can't be too far away. We'll find him in the woods and I'll bring him home and make him a baked potato,_ and he slipped back into sleep and dreamed himself making a baked potato, just as he'd thought. He lifted the sour cream bucket upside down to scoop it out, and it all came slopping down on top of the plate. Wirt put his face in his hands when Greg turned to show the meal to him and said, _"Alright, just bring it here, we'll eat it somehow,"_ and the brothers sat in the sunny kitchen that smelled of coffee and cinnamon and ate sour cream garnished with potato, so that for a small moment that lasted until sunrise, everything in the world was exactly right and okay.

* * *

 **Do you like trivia? Here's a rock fact: The title of this story means nothing and has no significance. I used "world of beasts" as a placeholder tag for the AU concept art I posted to my tumblr in early 2015 because i couldn't think of anything better, and astonishingly, when it came time to write the story proper i still didn't have a better idea, so it lived on and i kept thinking i could change someday it but now it's too late. im a hack**


	16. A Recurring Nightmare

**Yo I did some math and realized that as of this chapter, I have published more content in the first three months of 2017 than I did in the entirety of 2016. For those of us who want this story to wrap its damn self up already (ME) this is great news.**

 **(Seriously, 40K words since December! Damn I'm so great)**

16

Sometime near the thousandth hour of that god-awful night, spent trapped at the bottom of a well of darkness where the moon could not penetrate, but only touch blue on the canopy that swayed silently above to impress that light must still exist in the world, theoretically, but in a manner coldly remote from their living experience – sometime in that sleepless void, Dipper was startled from an open-eyed doze by the sound of sobbing. It was short and muffled and sourceless. His eyes focused immediately on the vast flat nothing between the trees around and he perked his ears to identify its origin, but it didn't come again. _Are you okay?_ he asked in his mind, but his jaw muscles did not comply. His mouth was sucked dry of moisture and his tongue felt like it hadn't been used in years, and perhaps shouldn't ever be again. He couldn't trust the things that came off of it anymore.

Then came a sigh, steadying by its inhale but shaky to exit. Dipper licked his lips and barely wetted them at all. Three hours ago he'd thought he was a pretty good person, all things considered; now, it seemed clear that any idea he had to work this hard to convince himself of was no longer trustworthy. Did he have to be a good person to do the right thing, though? He took a deep breath and finally croaked, "You alright?"

There was no sound for a minute, but the wind blew in faster and harder momentarily, whipping in out of the clear sky and then dying back again. It was almost certainly projection that the sound of it struck him as unbearably sorrowful. Then a small, perfunctory sniff sounded from the ground somewhere to his right, and Beatrice finally whispered back, "No."

What had he expected? He closed his eyes to no difference in the light level near the ground. His stomach ached, ached badly, and if he'd had any food in it, the ache would likely have turned long ago to ruminating nausea. He ran a hand over his face to put life back in his skin, move the blood, make himself feel something other than cadaverous, and took another chance on his own control over his words to say, "I wish I could –"

"What happened?" Beatrice was not interested in his platitudes. Her voice was wet and whispered, but still knife-sharp underneath. "What _happened_ between you and W-Wirt?" Dipper knew what she must have been taking about, but her characterization of it put him off-guard. "I saw – God, he's _never_ been that angry, I swear, not even when I was being monstrous to him back when – when we first met –" There was the soft sound of skin on skin, her hand over her mouth to keep her voice in control. "Did something happen between you while we were in the river?"

Dipper shook his head, a non-response in the dark. "No, it – I just –"

"Maybe that's why he changed," she mumbled through her fingers. "Maybe he was so angry he just –" Another pause. "What _happened?"_

Dipper was awash in uncertainty of what to say. How Wirt had found out about the events in the glade, he still had no idea; he hadn't been there to witness it happen. "I – I d-did something I don't understand," he whispered finally. "I said things I didn't mean, I don't know why I said it, it just came out of me –"

"About… him?"

"No." Despite himself, his throat was closing. He rubbed the bridge of his nose to clear the passage. "When… when I found Greg in the woods." Beatrice was silent. "I did something I didn't mean to do. I don't know why." His voice cracked like he was twelve years old again.

"Is that really what you think happened?" Dipper's shoulders squared when he heard Sara's voice, pinched tight. He should have expected that she wouldn't be asleep either. Beatrice audibly sat up. "Because I'm really interested to hear about it, if you actually think you're telling the truth right now."

"What are you talking about?" Beatrice was lost in the face of their obliqueness. "What happened?"

Eyes were on him, seeing or not. Dipper's pulse thumped in his palms. In the dark, memory floated free before his eyes: bursting through the thicket into the sun-soaked glade, his knife in his hand, the shape of the wolf in the grass. He'd shouted, and made motions to interfere, and then…

"I don't know," he choked, and put his face in his hands and gripped his scalp. "'M sorry, God, I don't know…" He wished Mabel would speak up, speak on his behalf – she didn't know any better than Beatrice did what had happened in the clearing, but she would defend him immediately and unwaveringly, with a level of confidence he knew he didn't deserve but which he still would have given anything to hear voiced at that moment. Mabel said nothing, though. She was curled somewhere with Greg in a clear space between the thorns, sleeping. He should be happy that she could. Maybe one of them would be something like clear-headed and functional tomorrow.

He didn't stay anything more. No one did, and gradually the anticipation of further explanation reduced to a simmering disappointment which had been hoping, but not expecting, to be undermined. He imagined Beatrice straining in the dark, waiting for an answer to her question that he couldn't give, and Sara wrapping her arms around her knees and turning away to try and sleep. Or maybe she didn't feel safe sleeping around him anymore, and when the sun rose her eyes would still be open, full of exhaustion and disgust. Sickly, he laid his head against the tree behind.

Now was the returning descent into the quiet dark, full of half-formed and branching silhouettes that stood out from the mass of the woodland against the purple sky. Between long stretches of stillness, the wind would occasionally howl across the sky in a great desperate blast and set the woods chattering and stand up the hair on his arms. In the deep, it was easy to imagine that he was completely alone, maybe the last man on earth, in possession of nothing but his own sins. _I'm not giving this knife back to you,_ Sara had said. The memory was a stamp on his frontal lobe. _I'm not going to let you near Greg, so stop trying._ _If you want to prove anything to me, just do what I say._

He dug his fingernails into his scalp.

What hurt the most, in the face of all else, was his sureness that he really had intended to get Greg to safety. He could almost speed his pulse with just his recollected adrenaline from that moment – the golden light, the terror underlined with determination, the resurfacing of the old selfless bravery he had rarely felt in respect to anyone but Mabel. Then his arms had gone limp, his feet tripped on each other, even his eyes lost focus, and his knees hit the ground hard. With the benefit of hindsight, his selfish heart sought to characterize the incident as malfunction, a stroke or psychological break or _something_ , because it rendered him a victim, and blameless for what happened next. He'd broken the cuffs that held him firmly within his form and trailed slightly behind his body while it proceeded forward as a mindless thing, spouting words that he didn't mean or even understand _–_ a series of moments where he was in as little control of his rational actions as he would have been in a dream, until Sara spoke from the shadows and shocked him back into place behind his own eyes, just in time to watch the monolith of his friends' trust in him crumble to gravel.

 _You're going insane,_ a voice whispered in his mind, and he pressed his mouth into his hands to muffle a sob.

It was a very, very long night, and Dipper was awake for every moment of it while the narrative in his head grew increasingly spiteful by the hour. He ran through the moments in the glade over and over, because it hurt him, and he deserved to hurt, until his head was overrun with visions of wolves' eyes and vines and blinding sun and branching wood. Images coupled lewdly and bred nightmares that hadn't even the decency to come to him by sleep, but painted themselves in neon across the waking canvas of his eyelids.

He dreamt of sitting back in the grass, patient while he waited for black creepers to choke a young child to death. He dreamt of Sara at his side during, and of her refusal speak to him afterward as she crawled over to Greg's body and pressed her lips against his cold forehead. A bright-eyed monstrous thing watched him from the edge of the clearing, and Mabel stepped out from beneath its shadow. She was crying. Dipper stood and rushed to hug her. As long as she was safe everything was alright, things were going to be okay; he thought this until he realized that only his left arm held her in embrace, because the other was keeping hold on the camping knife that he had sheathed neatly in her stomach.

The image of her shell-shocked face finally tore him from deep fantasy. He opened his eyes and his left eye socket throbbed massively. Something terrible in him gloated, _That was funny!,_ as the stomach-heaviness that he'd been bearing all night curdled. He stumbled blindly away to vomit in the brush.

When he was done, he couldn't which way would bring him back to the others, so he stayed where he was. _You're a mess,_ his internal monologue told him. He sat against a tree, hunched and shivering in the dark. _Unsalvageable. Worthless. Consider killing yourself._

The suggestion was poignant enough that he felt the need to chatter out loud, "I d-d-don't want that."

 _They'd be safe from you. Your sister, Bumblebee, everyone._ He shook his head. _You're really impressively selfish. Kill them, then._ He shook his head harder. _Just listen to yourself. Forget that you almost left the kid to die – now you're having thoughts about hurting people? Tsk._ It wasn't funny, but his mouth twisted into cracked smile. _That's some industrial-grade messed-up, kid. You could crack at any moment._

Once again, he violently shook his head, and slapped himself on the forehead a couple times for good measure: "That's enough," he mumbled, and tried to sit up and breathe, deep and clear. Form was manifesting in the understory for the first time, and he gave his focus to a shrub, following the almost imperceptible movements of its black leaves against the black forest. "I'm okay," he continued. "I'm here, I'm me."

 _You're an idiot._

He whispered, "I'm me."

 _For how much longer?_ But he won. The voice settled, and so did the waking nightmares. To be able to sit in the dark and stare endlessly at nothing at all was downright restful.

He was awake to watch the dark shift imperceptibly to shades of blue and dull green. He heard the first birdsong, and saw gray light touch the smooth sky in the east, budding outward and coaxing color where it passed. Dipper lowered his gaze to his hands, clasped and stationary and cold. He had to go back, but he could probably put it off a little longer. When the sunlight finally slung its arms up over the horizon to put golden caps on the trees, and the atmosphere changed from solemn blue to a strawberry lemonade gradient, he stood and shuffled stiffly up the broken path he'd cut into the brush before. He hadn't gone very far from the others after all.

The clearing was quiet, flushed with crisp young light and the mealy odors that were carried into the warming air with evaporated water. To the right of his entrance, Beatrice slumped sideways against a prominent ridge in a tree trunk, apparently asleep. Her hair curled thick under her chin, and she held herself in a tight, rigid hug. Mabel lay at the furthest point of the clearing form him, one arm wrapped around Greg and the other cushioning her head. Her brow creased and relaxed in cycles.

Sara was awake, though, and in almost the exact fashion he had imagined before, she looked up at him with eyes haunted by lack of sleep. When she spoke, her voice was aged and wary: "Where have you been?"

He gestured limply at the woods behind him with a thumb, but that part was self-evident. "I just…" He realized how uninvested he was in trying to come up with a nicer-sounding alternative to the truth. "I was sick."

"Oh." She gave him a once-over and then dropped her gaze again. "…So are you okay?"

"I guess so."

"I heard you talking to yourself out there. I assume it was to yourself." He cleared thorny vines with a kick; the pistol was on the ground there, abandoned for the night. He dropped to his knees next to it. As he wrapped himself up in a small ball she leaned in across the distance between them to whisper, "What the hell is going on with you, Dipper?" After everything, she still sounded genuinely concerned. He did a quick check on himself in order to master the lump in his throat.

Dipper stumbled toward an answer by starting with, "Yeah," but it came out so watery he had to stop and try again. "Yeah, I don't… I don't know. I don't know anymore. I can't keep my thoughts straight, I'm losing track of time, my, my dreams have been –" He paused. "I just said I was okay, didn't I? I wasn't thinking about it. I'm… not. I don't think I'm okay anymore. Fuck," he added, and quickly brushed the back of his hand across his face. Sara sat with her legs pressed together, her fingers trailing over her lips while she stared at the ground.

"You should talk to Mabel," she whispered after a minute given for him to recompose himself. "Mabel is – does she know what's going on with you?" He shook his head. "You should talk to her. …Dipper?" He gave a bow to acknowledge her question. "I don't… think you should be left alone with anyone." She squeezed her eyes shut and turned, as if she expected a blow. Dipper was tombstone-still. "I really want to believe that we're all safe as long as we stay together, but after yesterday… I don't think that anymore. Do you think I'm wrong?"

In her right-hand belt loop, his camping knife still hung awkwardly, its blade embedded in the deep leaf-litter on the ground. He caught himself staring at it. _Imagine what kind of damage you could do with that thing._ His heart sped, and the head-shake he gave to show agreement was carefully measured. She did not notice his preoccupation.

"I'm gonna have to tell everyone why, when they wake up," Sara continued. She wouldn't look at him. "You don't have to, um, participate in that conversation if you don't want to. God, I'm treating you like a live grenade, I just don't know what to –"

"I understand," he croaked, while the monster in his head jeered at him for giving ground. She nodded, and laid her head against a tree. She closed her eyes, but Dipper doubted she would sleep.

Beatrice woke when the dawn touched her face, and as she mumbled and kicked away thorns in her morning confusion, Greg began to stir too, which roused Mabel. She blinked, once and then a few more times, looking as tired as any of them. Greg fussed, and she made a weak attempt to pull him in closer to her and coax him back to sleep, but it was too late; the kid was awake for ten seconds and his first word was _"Wirt."_ Jason Funderburker popped his head out from behind his legs, struggling to focus in the early light. "It's morning and… we gotta find Wirt…" Greg tried weakly to shrug Mabel off.

"Be calm, li'l buddy," she mumbled, petting his head until he stood up and her hand fell away. She crawled to her knees behind him with her face covered in dirt and twigs, and yawned as she scrubbed them away.

Greg stumbled sleepily forward, pulling Jason Funderburker up from the ground as he did and stuffing the frog inside his sweater. "'S mornin'," the little boy repeated. "Le's go."

Sara gave Dipper a glance that was too brief for him to read. "Let's eat something first." Greg bit his lip and looked like he might cry, but he remained stolid. He sat down with a thump and crossed arms. "We can't fall apart at a setback," Sara continued vaguely. She dragged the half-full bag of food toward her, and withdrew a beet with deep apathy. "We have to… we'll keep taking care of ourselves. We have to."

Beatrice rubbed at her face and murmured, "Look at the trees." Sometime overnight the trees around them, evergreen and broadleaf alike, had greyed and withered, and their dead branches rattled meanly, painting a menacing undertone beneath an otherwise rich morning. The blackberry briers on the ground were rigid and brown and broken. Dipper's first instinct was that the forest itself had rejected his presence in favor of death, and he hugged himself tightly. Sara blinked around at the ruined woods, still holding the beet. She set it down with a shaken look.

"We have to stay focused," she reiterated, and concentrated on the food bag again, running a furious knuckle across her eyes. With shaking hands, she removed two potatoes, and a few walnuts, and another beet. "Everything's gonna be okay if w-we…" Again, she trailed off, maintaining composure for a few solid seconds before her eyes filled with tears. "We were so close," she gulped, before dropping the bag of food to weep into her hands.

Nobody moved to comfort her. Even Greg was heavy-lidded and guiltily still. Dipper waited, and then thought that he should go to her, but she wouldn't want him to, would she? He cast his eyes shamedly away to the ground, and there saw that his right hand was wrapped firm around the handle of the pistol.

It seemed for one second a perfectly normal thing that his finger should be circling idly beneath the barrel, and then the sensation of freezing metal hit the comprehending part of his brain and his circulatory system flushed with ice.

 _"Christ!"_

He threw the gun, an incredibly stupid action which still seemed the safest thing he could do in that moment, and sprung backward from his seat as it skittered across the ground and wound up near Sara's feet. She was shocked from her misery at his scream. Mabel leapt to her feet, Beatrice sat forward, Greg jumped and clutched at Jason Funderburker, and all of them looked to Dipper, who stood panting and ankle-deep in blackberries, his fists balled to signal his control over them.

"Dipper?!" Mabel reached toward him but he shook his head wildly and made another step back.

"D-don't c-come near me," he babbled. He shoved his hands into his armpits and shook his head, over and over.

Greg piped up in innocent surprise: "Dipper?"

 _What do you think you're doing?_ asked the vile thing in his head, and he struggled to speak past it. "G-God, I'm so sorry, you need to tell them, Sara, if no one stops me, I – I-I think I might hurt someone…"

Sara stood up too and Beatrice said, "What?!" and crawled toward Greg. Mabel looked disbelieving. Dipper's throat was too narrow for all the emotion it was tasked with containing, and he began to hyperventilate.

"Y-you were right, Sara, you were right not to trust me – I d-don't know what's going on, I should have said some-something before, Mabel, I should have told you, I thought this was all just stress –"

Mabel's eyes were huge. She pressed her hands to her mouth: "Bro-bro…"

 _What is this going to accomplish?_ The voice grew increasingly angry, and he clutched at his head and growled in frustration. _Moron. You're going to ruin everything –_

 _"Shut up!"_ He stomped his foot and howled."Shut up, you're not me and you don't know what I want and I want you _gone –"_

Behind his left eye, a wire sparked and shocked him from head to heart. His vision flashed white and he stumbled backward, shouted, and fell without any attempt to catch himself. His knees bled where dry thorns pierced them. He doubled over in agony and then when he could bend no further still felt himself twisting inward, into a deep black empty place inside himself where thoughts echoed louder than words.

For a moment he was frozen, listening. Then it sounded, as clearly as someone speaking over his shoulder and as familiar as a recurring nightmare:

 _"That's enough, Pine Tree."_

Fingers pried a crack down the middle of his skull and began to pull it open. He screamed.

Somewhere worlds away, Mabel called his name. Her hands were on his shoulders, shaking, shaking. He couldn't respond. Strange ideas scrambled his own like radio interference: brilliant insights, terrible atrocities. His hand was clapped over his left eye, and he tried to see, to find something external to himself to latch onto, but it was all form and noise. His body was a static bundle, every tremor a novelty. The sky was going black and Mabel was crying.

 _Pain is hilarious!_ He laughed. His body was laughing and his brain recoiled. The fingers on his skull squeezed, cracked the bone.

Dipper's head nodded and his eyes rolled up and a trapdoor in his stomach flew open like the scars of an autopsy. He fell down out of his own body into something black and silent and void.

–

Bill opened his eyes. Both of them.

–

The sun-proofed breeze settled in the grass, like a prey animal lying low while shadows pass above. The birds sang, and broke rhythm, and tapered gradually off into nothing. When Dipper went still, so did everything else.

Mabel was subject to the hush too. As her brother's shoulders lost tension and his laughter cut out as suddenly as by a pulled audio cable, she froze, still humming with panicked energy built up behind her fingertips and the base of her throat. The dead trees sagged and the sky paled above them. "Dipper?" He made no response, locked in a low kneel with his palms on the ground and his eyes down. "Dipper, for G-God's sake, you're scaring the crap out of me…" Still nothing. Her breath came faster and her stillness broke.

Greg hadn't moved from his seat on the ground, and watched the proceedings with enormous eyes. Sara was visibly tense as piano wire. Beatrice came up behind Mabel, tiptoeing like any noise would rouse. Her face was pale. "Is he…?"

Mabel started to stutter, "I-I don't –" but was interrupted with a smooth, _"I'm fine."_

Mabel was so badly startled she let out a small scream. Dipper shifted and raised his head; Sara stepped backward, and Beatrice stepped in front of Greg. Mabel watched her brother sit up on his heels and turn her way. He looked… normal. His eyes were tired, his smile regretful and placid. "Sorry," he mumbled, like he'd just let loose a particularly juicy sneeze. "I shouldn't have let everyone see me like that."

Beatrice looked flabbergasted. Mabel felt pretty -gasted herself. Sara said, "Dipper, what was –?"

"I lost it." Dipper palmed an eye, looking bemused. "After everything that happened yesterday, and all week, and then I didn't get any sleep –"

Beatrice shook her head with increasing speed. "Nuh-uh. No, Dipper, that was _fucked_ up. A shitty night doesn't mean you just –"

"This isn't the first time it's happened in the last couple days," he mumbled. His eyes searched the ground rapidly, blinking and struggling to focus. "She'll tell you." He flipped a hand and eyes went to Sara. "It all hit me at the same time. Wirt and – and how close we are to the end – I handled it badly. Freaked out. I'm sorry." He closed his eyes for a second, and then looked to his sister with a sad smile.

Mabel didn't believe him. He didn't sound like himself. She had seen her twin in the throes of overwhelming panic before, many times; it never manifested as an explosion, but a collapse, like a churning star. He would eat himself before he lashed out where others could see him. But he was alive, wasn't he? He was lucid, and he hadn't bitten out his tongue, and she didn't believe he would lie to her anymore once they had a moment alone together. If he was keeping something to himself, it was for a good reason. She pursed her lips together and tried to return his smile.

"He's okay," she choked, and clasped Dipper's shoulder. Sara's body language did not step down from high alert. Beatrice helped Greg to his feet. "It's okay for now. We're almost to Gravity Falls. This is all almost over. We just need to hold out a little longer."

Sara sounded pained. "Mabel, he said he was going to hurt someone."

"I felt like it, right then." Dipper's face creased. Mabel thought it was supposed to be an expression of shame, but it looked more like he was hurt. She squeezed his hand sympathetically, and he squeezed back and then withdrew it to help himself stand. "And God, no, I don't think me saying that is going to make you any less nervous. I think I need to have an eye kept on me, too." When he made it to his feet, Mabel was struck by his posture. He stood rod-backed rather than with his usual easy slouch, and the extra height offered by this change was noticeable. "But I'm okay. For right now I'm okay. You can trust me." Mabel tried to make eye contact with him, but he was still consistently changing his focus between many points in the area around them. It gave a lizardlike impression.

Sara looked unconvinced. Beatrice attempted to keep Greg hidden behind her, but he kept trying to duck past in order to see what was going on. Mabel kept a steady hand on Dipper's elbow, though something about his manner left her feeling unnecessary and small. Her brother's changing gaze finally stilled, and he squared his shoulders and smiled again, modestly. "I'm still, uh, interested in that breakfast you were talking about," he told Sara. Her responsive smile was perfunctory.

"What do you say, kid?" Dipper continued, crouching down to offer Greg an entreating look and briefly seeming to struggle to balance in the position. "How about some food before we go out to find your big brother today?" Greg, being Greg, had only to hear that someone was on the same page as him where Wirt was concerned, and lost all wariness in response. His eyes brightened and he stepped out from behind Beatrice with a smile. For a single beat, Mabel had the fearful idea that Dipper was going to do something violent as Greg approached him, and was horrified with herself over it. Of course nothing happened, of _course_ not, Dipper only reached out to ruffle the kid's hair and how could she think such a thing about her own brother?, but that instant was enough. She was already riding fear's paranoid high.

Dipper said fondly, "Let's eat breakfast, Candy Pants."

In a span of seconds, several things happened. Greg's expression fell from delight to confusion, on a clear gradient toward surprised comprehension. A raw and wild birdcall went up from the woods to the north, and white wings burst from the canopy and rained dead foliage upon them as Beatrice's crow cut through the sun-soaked air, screaming madly. Dipper locked eyes on the bird. Beatrice blanched. Mabel craned her neck at the circle of the sky, clear and cold and beautiful above them, ringed by dark woods and thudding slightly in her adrenaline-sharpened eyes, until it all went muddy as Greg cried out, "Bill! Is that you?"

The word put a tack in the moment, it seemed at least to Mabel. The name hit her ears and congealed there and all time beyond it grew strained and distorted, like a piece of gum stretched between the ground and a careless shoe. Greg had no idea, and kept talking with increasing excitement: "So that's how you made Beatrice better, like you said! You were with Dipper the whole t–!" He was more than a little surprised when Beatrice grabbed his arm to wrench him backward; Jason Funderburker cried out in shock. In the same smooth movement, she turned and socked Dipper in the jaw.

Her brother's stagger and partial collapse finally drained Mabel's inertia. She jumped between him and Beatrice on sheer instinct, where the former had his hand clapped to his face and the latter took a wide, wincing stance, nursing her knuckles. "Beatrice!" Sara cried, aghast.

"That's not Dipper," Beatrice croaked, seconds before the white crow swept in to land in the branches of the skeletal Edelwood tree. It raised its beak in a clear expression of approbation and cawed again, angrily.

Mabel had already opened her mouth to speak before she realized she had no words at the ready. She made eye contact with Sara in a wandering bid for affirmation and found nothing there but exhausted despair and disbelief. Beatrice was edgy and kept shooting glances to where her bat sat up against a tree. Only Greg looked more confused than angry. The portion of Mabel's psyche which declined to acknowledge that the world could really be as terrible a place as people liked to insist was sparking and starting to smoke. No part of this scenario made sense, and aside from that it was the worst thing imaginable, which served to further delegitimize it as far as her coping mechanisms were concerned. She had very nearly developed a full line, complete with disarming jokes and honeyed entreats, to bring everybody back to ground level and work this all out as friends, but her focus splintered as the soft sound of laughter hit her ears.

She was the only one facing away from her brother, but the others' faces told her everything she needed to know before she turned. Dipper was still on the ground, one knee up and his left hand on his lowered face. His shoulders shook lightly with jolting mirth that grew madder as she listened. "Oh, oh man…" He rubbed at the spot where Beatrice had struck him. "That's not supposed to be funny, is it?" When he turned his face up, his smile was unflinchingly wide. "Oh, well. I was only gonna keep the ruse up until I had my chance to off someone, anyway!"

His voice was loud and strangely monotone, like a shout maintained at normal volume. Commotion went up from the others at his words, but Mabel was still. "Dipper…"

Dipper said through his teeth, "Long time no see, Shooting Star," and Mabel's universe shrunk and dimmed around him. She didn't move as he drew, staggering, to his feet. His arms swung and his head rolled, forward and then back, before it came fully upright. Still he had that smile on, too big for his face but still far too small to reach his eyes. Sara whispered, "What the hell…"

"Nice to meet you too, Bumblebee!" Dipper crooned, and propped himself bizarrely in the air with an elbow shelved on nothing. "Lots of missed connections for us in the last couple days! Not to say I haven't been getting a pretty good look at you through Pine Tree's eyes! A _very_ good look!" She crossed her arms over her chest and Dipper's smile got somehow wider. "But how rude of me!" He gestured hugely. "I haven't introduced myself yet! The name's Bill! Bill Cipher!"

Mabel whimpered, "Dipper, no…" He waved a dismissive hand her direction.

"Don't mind her! She's missed me terribly and is gonna need a few minutes to process my miraculous return!" Mabel's face was burning hot. "How do we want to do the meet and greet, then? Shall we go in a circle and share three facts about ourselves?"

"Bill, what's happening?" Greg pushed out from behind Beatrice again, looking agitated. "Is this part of your plan?"

Dipper did not answer him. "Well, well, it's the man of the hour!" he cried, and extended a hand toward the child. The outward movement provoked a strong protective movement from Beatrice. "Ladies and gentlemen, I give you: the greatest freaking disappointment I've had the misfortune to deal with since I woke back up!" Sara made a nonverbal sound of anger. Greg look stricken, and then slightly cross.

"Why are you being mean?" he asked. Jason Funderburker wiggled up out of the sweater and gave an angry, _"Rrorp!"_ Dipper threw his head back and clapped, all the signifiers of delight with none of the passion.

"Oh, man! This one's just adorable, isn't he?" he asked the group at large. No one answered him. "You're unflappable! It really is just a tragedy your asinine brother had to get himself in our way. We could really have had a good thing together if you'd just stuck to our plan –"

"Dipper, that's _enough."_ Sara's knuckles were white. "Whatever shit you need to get out of your system, get it over with and –"

For the duration of the conversation, Mabel had been at a loss for words, and she finally found them in an echo from Beatrice: "This isn't Dipper." Her voice rung hollowly in her head. Sara shot her a scared look. Dipper's wide grin turned into a self-satisfied smirk; the longer she stared at her brother's face, the less familiar it became. "This is Bill. And he died five years ago."

"Wrong," Dipper hissed, "but you never were the bright twin, were you?"

A vent opened inside of her, and heat rushed back into her soul. Her body, which had felt faded and static, clarified, and her fists clenched tight. "Well go on, then, you two-dimensional asshole," Mabel shot back. Her voice got shoutier with each word. "Wow us with your, your stunning tale of how you escaped certain death at our hands! I think we're all in the mood to be _real impressed!"_

Dipper – not Dipper, no, this was Bill – hooted and put his hands on his thighs. "Haa! Oh man, and I was worried you might have mellowed with age, Shooting Star! I mean, though, if we're being honest, I can't really take credit for my own comeback." Mabel's eyes narrowed. "Props go to Pine Tree. He did a _fantastic_ job of preserving me all this time."

"He did not," Mabel hissed. "Dipper would never save you."

"He _would_ and _did."_ Bill made finger guns. "Granted, not on purpose."

"He would never let you into his body again! Not for anything!"

Bill cooed. "Shooting Star, you sweet stupid little thing. I never _left."_

The crow put up a ruckus then, screaming and kicking and flapping at the tree where it rested before taking off. Mabel barely felt willing to spare it a glance; her eyes were locked on those of the monster inhabiting her brother. He continued as if there had been no interruption: "I mean, in the end, I'm just a bad dream, aren't I? A recurring nightmare. You never _really_ shake those off."

"You died with Uncle Ford," Mabel hissed. The tumbling light of the portal shone in the darkness that came when she blinked. "He took you with him and put you someplace you'd never escape from –"

"And credit where credit is due," Bill grinned, "Sixer was very dedicated to that plan! Always was a go-hard-or-go-home kinda guy! I thought I was dead for a long time, too!" Out of the corner of her eye, Mabel spied Sara pull the camping knife out of her belt. "But Pine Tree and me, we have history! I did sort of possess him all those times! He remembered me _very well,_ and really, what other way even is there to keep an idea alive?" He spread his hands in an exemplary manner. "But I was just an impression for a long time. Sleeping. Probably pretty cute, all curled up inside his head, not even knowing what was what! Then all _this_ happened and you kooky kids got yourselves mixed up in another _wacky adventure_ and wouldn't you know? –" Jazz hands. "I'm back in the Mindscape! Or someplace that's most of the way there, anyway. This is _my_ turf. This is my _domain._ And I'd be damned if I was gonna sleep through you brats trying to ruin a good thing for me by fixing it!"

Bill sauntered forward. Beatrice stepped away with Greg, but Mabel stood her ground. Her brother's form loomed closer to her.

"I mean, I _was_ just gonna lay low until I saw a good opening," he confessed. "Really a shame I wasn't strong enough to take over back during the first few days! Lots of missed opportunities to get one or all of you killed when those wolves were playing nursemaid to this dimension's insufferable godhead!" He made another step, and Mabel did not flinch. "But I had to interfere a time too many to keep things on track and, yes, tormenting your brother was so much fun that he started to realize something was up – that's on me! In my defense, I was still _very_ pissed off about what happened last night and he was my only available outlet!"

Sara said, "Get away from her, Dipper." Neither Mabel nor Bill paid her any mind.

"But I guess the jig's up now." His voice grew lower the closer he drew. "I really don't need Pine Tree anymore. And I really don't need you, either, Star."

Mabel squared her jaw as he reached toward her, and she stepped backward into a fighting stance. Her limbs thrummed with fury and her feet itched to kick the absolute shit out of something. She cast brief consideration on the fact that her twin brother's four-inches, fifty-pounds-favored frame was bearing down on her under the control of an amoral multi-dimensional demon who had actively tried to cause the death of her, her family members, and her friends on multiple occasions in the past, and found herself unable to glean any strong impression from the situation other than that it was possibly the most unfair thing that had ever happened in the history of the world and it was _pissing. Her. Off._

She screeched, _"I'm gonna stomp your ass back into the construction paper you safety-scissored yourself out of, you cycloptic cocksucker!"_ and Bill barked with laughter as he slung his arm around to strike at her face –

Sara was fast. She was fast and she had been edging closer to both of them for almost a minute while they were intent on one another. Bill may not have registered pain as a negative, but he was still subject to surprise, and when the camping knife sliced the back of his arm, he reacted with a stumble that destroyed his momentum. Mabel was left standing, still without a single inch conceded, and watched Bill's weight carry him sideways.

He skidded to a halt and turned his attention to Sara, clutching at his bleeding arm. She stood with her chest heaving and the knife at the ready.

"No," she whispered. "Dipper, Bill, whatever the hell you are – I told W-Wirt the same thing. I won't let anything in this forest hurt us anymore."

Just for a second, he didn't respond. He looked from her face to the knife and back to her face and then at her hand, shaking violently as she stepped in front of Mabel. Bill was not Dipper, but he advertised his thoughts through the same face, and Mabel knew what he was going to say an instant before he said it. An instant was not enough time to tell Sara to move.

"You don't have it in you," he laughed, and lunged forward.

Beatrice shouted. Sara made half a backward step, froze, and dropped the knife, just as Bill had predicted. Mabel cried, "Sara!" as Bill went low for her waist.

She stepped into the rush and, with one arm around his ribs and the other hand on his arm, threw him bodily with a pop of her hip.

Bill landed hard on his back. His head had barely hit the ground when Sara took his arm, pulled it straight, and dropped down behind his head. She wrapped her legs around his neck and squeezed, and Bill was left gasping and squirming as he failed to remove Dipper's body from the hold.

Mabel realized her mouth was hanging open. "Holy…" Beatrice looked on in awe. "How did you do that?" Sara was too fixated on maintaining her position to answer. Bill made a sound that that seemed at first to be choking until it manifested as weak laughter.

 _"Ha ha haa…"_ He opened and closed his hand. Sara gripped his wrist tighter. "Y-you seeing this, Pine Tree? It's just what you've always w-wanted –" Sara grimaced and increased pressure on his jugular.

"Mabel, please grab his other hand," she said over his sputtering.

Mabel agreed, "Yes, ma'am," and made the private vow to never question a direct order from Sara again.

As she stepped in to grab her brother's arm, however, something caught her eye. The camping knife lay black and gray in the flattened grass a foot from Bill's searching right hand. Her eyes widened.

"Sara!" she cried, diving forward, "he's gonna get the –"

Perfectly timed to her warning, Bill found the blade of the knife, and he slid his palm up it toward the handle, leaving a slick sheen of blood behind. Mabel tried to wrench it from him, but his grip was established. He couldn't turn his head, and swung blindly; she raised her arm to protect her face, and red-hot pain splashed up her forearm.

Sara started at Mabel's scream, and when she saw the knife, her grip slackened.

Bill wrenched himself from her hold, and rolled onto his belly as she tried to push herself away from him. He slashed at her, but Mabel held her arm close to her body and kicked his hands. _"Ha-haaa!"_ he laughed, making no attempt to shield himself. He rose to his knees in front of Mabel and sliced the air between them with gleeful zest.

"Hey, asshole!" Even Bill knew what was signified by the dull clunk of metal that sounded. Everyone stopped moving.

Beatrice stood a few feet away, holding her bat in her left hand and Sara's gun in her right. Her shoulders heaved. "Stop. Put it down." He was stopped already, but it took another violent gesture from her before he dropped the knife. Mabel made a lightning glance to the ground and scooted the blade closer to herself with her foot. When they were both out of his reach, she bowed to pick it up.

Bill didn't make any daring moves, but his eyes narrowed and Mabel wondered if he was following the same track of thought as herself in questioning if Beatrice even knew how to use the pistol. Fortunately, the issue was rendered unimportant when Sara scrambled to her feet and ran to her side. Beatrice handed the weapon over to its owner as Mabel stepped up next to both of them, and all three girls stood shoulder-to-shoulder as a small human wall of bruised skin and righteous fury.

Bill skipped his gaze between each of them in turn. He stood slowly, maintaining impeccable eye contact, and raised his hands in snide surrender.

"So what now?" he panted. "You gonna shoot him?"

Mabel's breath slowed and she snuck a glance leftward. Sara was stock-still on Beatrice's other side. "I mean, it's not like Pine Tree's _dead,"_ Bill continued, holding his heaving side. "I've still got him in here! We're sharing some very deep conversation!" He tapped hard on his temple, twice, and grinned ever wider, his face made ugly by expression that would have been unbearable for a human to maintain for so long. "What – you wanna see?"

Beatrice began to ask what he meant, but Bill didn't wait to clarify. His eyes went unfocused and his face fell slack, and then he faltered and cried out, and his hand swung up to his left eye. Sara tensed at the sudden movement, but Mabel cried, "Don't!" Her brother stood hunched, and staggered when he looked up. All three girls took a step backward.

He blinked disbelievingly, as if seeing for the first time. He looked at his hands, and then at them. Spittle rimmed his lips, and his eyes were huge and bloodshot and desperate. "Mabel!" he choked. Cold water rushed down through her body when his voice cracked on her name.

Beatrice put out her bat to stop her from moving forward, but Mabel knew what had happened. She whispered, "Dipper?" He put out a beseeching hand toward her. His whole body shook.

"Mabel, r-run!" he stuttered. He tried to take a step toward them, but moved like he was dragging an iron ball on his ankle. "You've g-g-got to get away f-from him, h-he wants to kill – gaah!" He lifted a hand and slapped himself heavily across the face.

 _"Dipper!"_ Mabel tried to shove past the bat, and Beatrice had to break rank to stop her. Over the taller girl's shoulder, Mabel watched Dipper buckle and cough. When he made it to his feet again, he was back to wearing Bill's smiling mask. She gave a last, weak struggle and then stopped. Tears beaded in her eyes.

Bill tittered, "Wow, sorry kids! I'd actually planned to let you all have a moment there!" He planted his hands on his knees and panted heavily. "Pine Tree's a real fighter! Had to cut the visit short!" With a _hup,_ he stood up and rolled his head around in a circle before settling it into place with a sickly satisfied expression. Mabel sniffed and rubbed her nose with her bloody arm. "Well, ladies," he continued, bashfully scratching at the back of his head, "I gotta say, this is has been a real rollercoaster of an introduction and you are all absolute delights, but I've _really_ got places to be." Beatrice and Sara exchanged glances. "So if you don't mind…"

Beatrice barked, "Hey!" but Sara murmured, "No," and put out a hand.

He curtsied without losing eye contact, without a falter in his smile. Mabel's stomach was sour and her arm throbbed and she wanted to shout or throw something, but instead she focused on searching her brother's face to try and locate him underneath it. It was unthinkable that there was any possibility of finality carried in this moment – but she wanted to get a good look at him. Just in case.

Bill winked and tucked his hands into his pockets. Without a word, he turned on his heel and ambled whistling away into the forest, and the whistling carried on for a long while after the rest of him was gone.

Sometime after even that, the birds finally started to sing again.

It did not occur to Mabel for a very long time that she could move. Her finger spasmed, and with a small gasp she dropped the knife she'd been holding as her arms went limp. With her movement, the others woke as well. Beatrice slung her bat around her neck and hung her arms off of it with a long low sigh, and Sara dropped her gaze and turned around slowly.

"Greg?" she asked. "Are you –?"

"Where did Dipper go?" Greg had been tucked, presumably by Beatrice, into the crook of a low branch to keep him away from the action, and sat there swinging his feet anxiously. His fingers were white on the wood. "Is he gonna be okay?"

"Yeah, buddy," Mabel said hollowly. She thought she was insufficiently comforting for even an eight-year-old, but Beatrice and Sara both lost a little visible tension at her words. She realized that she was the only soul among them who fully understood what had just happened; for the first time, she was in a position of authority, and that came with responsibility. She allowed herself a few deep, preparatory breaths, and then stood up straight.

"Alright," she announced with unfelt vigor and might, "Everyone ready to go?"

"Are we following him?" Sara asked. "What would we even do if we caught up?"

"I dunno, but we'll have to figure that out later." Mabel picked up her backpack from the ground and started loading unpacked vegetables back into the other. "We'll eat on the road. We've just got to try and get to Gravity Falls before –"

She jumped bodily at the interruption of a loud crash from the trees to the south. Sara and Beatrice, too, immediately turned and grabbed their respective weapons. The commotion was indelicate, crunching footsteps that made no attempt to hide themselves from listeners. A male voice floated indistinctly underneath.

Beatrice looked at Sara and they both nodded and positioned themselves on opposite sides of the opening in the trees from which the noise emanated. Mabel was frozen. Greg grabbed her hand.

"It's Wirt!" he whispered as the branches edging the clearing began to bend and a leading foot manifested in the shadowed wood. Mabel didn't have time to dissuade him from the idea before a face appeared.

Brown hair. A pink nose and a soul patch. Her heart siezed.

The man turned his head to say over his shoulder, "But like, just because you got it out of a dumpster doesn't mean it's necessarily trash –" and the last-minute movement was what caused Beatrice's bat to only graze the side of his head rather than hit him square in the face. He collapsed forward across the thorny ground, too late for everyone to see that, in clearer light, he obviously looked nothing like Dipper. Chaos unfolded. Sara jumped backward and Mabel screamed slightly a furious shout came from the wooded doorway behind the man: _"Robbie!"_

Considering that Beatrice was standing in the clearing with them, it was a perfectly bizarre experience that she apparently burst from the trees before their very eyes, wearing a mangled work-casual outfit and wielding a lumberjack's axe. She raised it behind her shoulder with a wild shout, looking in every way visibly ready to take some names. She was thunder, but Mabel was a lightning rod. Recognition hit hard. She cried out and jumped into the fray and everyone froze.

Wendy Corduroy cut her shout. She did not lower her axe, or change her stance, but she looked from Mabel, to Greg up in the tree, to Sara and to Beatrice and to Robbie on the ground and then back to Mabel, and while an expression of realization or happy surprise would have been appreciated, her real first response was also perfectly understandable:

"…What the _hell_ is going on here?"

* * *

 **Wow, turns out, I love writing Bill! Who could have guessed. It's decided, Bill can be the villainous protagonist now. He wins and traps everyone in his personal hell dimension and heckles five teenagers and a fourth-grader for eternity and Mabel whips up mad insults to throw back at him and it goes back and forth forever and I get the privilege of writing it. This is my gift to myself for working so hard on this fic**

 **I may allow myself a small respite before going back to worrying about updating this fic; I have some small matters from Real Life to give priority to for a while, which is code for "I need to file my taxes and am incapable of focusing on more than a single project at once, and of the two enterprises fanfic is not the one which can get me audited for failing to complete it in a timely manner." Fortunately, I feel like this chapter leaves the story in a pretty lowkey and even-headed place, appropriate for a short hiatus.**


	17. Shadows at Bay

This was all very off-course from the expected, but fortunately, Wendy was an extraordinarily flexible-minded person and leader. She took in the scene before her – Robbie facedown in a blackberry bush, Mabel Pines with her hands covered in blood and raised to pacify, and two armed strangers and a child in varying states of injury and dishevelment in the center of a clearing of dead trees – and decided she should remain calm and collected, and listen with patience and credulity to whatever story underlined this setup.

Unfortunately, she was still possessed by the ghost of the ass-whooping she'd been ready to hand out, and not quite as executive as she would have hoped. "Are you fucking _kidding_ me?!" she exclaimed. She swung her axe into a tree to bleed some excess energy and left it there for everyone's safety. "Is this _actually_ happening right now? Mother of shit." With her fingers, she made a small cage of concentration around her face. "Mabel Pines! Of all people! Christ, Mabel, I thought you were _dead."_

"So did I!" Mabel cried. They hadn't seen each other in a couple of years now, not since the twins came up to attend her high school graduation; Mabel was a mite taller and her dental hardware was finally gone, but she had the same wide-eyed energy that Wendy remembered. "I mean, not me – but I thought _you_ were dead!"

"What the hell are you doing here?" Wendy demanded. She stomped over and shook Robbie's shoulder; he didn't move. "Great, look, you killed Robbie!" A weak moan filtered up from between the thorns. "Nevermind."

"Who are you?" One of the strangers, a petite dark-skinned girl with a pistol in her hand and a deeply nonplussed look on her face, glanced between Wendy and Mabel in cycles. "Mabel, you know her?"

"You've gotta be them," the other stranger said, a tall gingery girl with a baseball bat. "The ones the crow talked about."

Mabel confirmed, "Wendy and Robbie!" and Wendy asked, "What crow?"

Robbie was starting to stir on the ground. _"Nghhh._ Baaabe…"

"Um. Is he okay?" The little boy up in the tree looked on with wide eyes.

Robbie rose to his knees and then fell back over. "He's fine," Wendy confirmed.

"Hmm. Okay." The child looked thoughtful for a moment and then added, "My name's Greg."

"Hi." Wendy gave Mabel a sideways look; Mabel shrugged with a small smile. "Seriously, who are all of you?"

The black girl opened her mouth to speak, but was superceded. "Beatrice," said the tall one. She slipped her bat coolly behind her neck and hung her arms from it in a clear display.

"Are you the one who hit Robbie?" A nod. "Wow. You've got a good arm."

"And this is Sara." Mabel gestured, and the other girl offered solemn acknowledgement. "You guys, this is Wendy. She's from Gravity Falls. We've been friends for, like – ages." The one named Beatrice gave another, more respectful nod.

"Aghh, God, babe, my head," Robbie moaned from the ground.

"Be quiet, Robbie. This is Robbie, by the way."

Sara tilted her head at him. "Good to meet you?"

"Yeah. Yeah, you know what, it is good." A lot of Wendy's aggression had dissipated, and she could look now on the proceedings with something like excitement. Honestly, this was the luckiest thing that had happened to them all week. She made an attempt to correct the mood with a friendly growl: "Hey, Mabel Pines is muh _girl._ Her people are my people." She laid a demonstrative arm around Mabel's shoulders, and the younger girl beamed. "Jesus, though, you guys look like you got attacked by a bear or something." Wendy was looking pretty rough herself, she knew, but in a sexy apocalypse-princess sort of way, if she did say so. The three other women were more straightforwardly dirty, and sweat sheened on their skin. The stress in their faces was not appealing, just sad. "Um… is that _your_ blood, Mabel?" As Mabel turned down to look at her hands, Wendy felt unease twist the air as a physical sensation. She glanced up. Sara wrapped herself snug in her arms, and Beatrice swung her bat with a shuttered expression. The disquiet was palpable.

Mabel blinked at her brown-smeared palms a few times and then laughed shakily. "It's, um – yeah, but it's not too bad." She clutched at her right forearm which, Wendy now saw, hid a long shallow cut behind a tattered sweater sleeve. "Just looks like it."

Wendy gave her a hard stare, still holding her around the shoulder. "Who cut you?" No answer and no eye contact. The child in the tree, Greg, chewed on his bottom lip and then dropped from his branch. He landed on his butt in a pile of leaves and, when he rose, moved to stand close by Mabel's side. She put a hand on his head.

Something was missing here, something so obvious that it hadn't occurred to Wendy until now to question it. She looked between four ashen faces, two drawn weapons, a knife abandoned on the ground and, again, the blood on Mabel's hands. "Where's Dipper?" No one spoke, but everyone had a look like they'd been recipient to an anticipated punch. "Mabel, where's Dipper? …Is he okay?"

Beatrice pressed her bat against the ground and leaned on it like a cane. Sara said softly, "Mabel…" Mabel turned away. "I – think we should all talk –"

Wendy had the creeping feeling of a wet cloth having been pressed to the back of her neck. "What happened?" She let go of Mabel's shoulders and stood straight. "Mabel, did something happen to Dipper?"

Beatrice began to say, "We were just –" but Sara put a hand on her arm to quiet her. Mabel cupped a palm around her mouth.

Then she started to cry.

–

Trapped in a cage which looked and felt in all ways like his own body, but too cavernous, ill-fitting for the essence of him which had once perfectly filled every crook and capillary, Dipper watched himself trip and perspire through the woods from the devastating vantage point of eyes that were no longer under his control. He felt every ache and spasm inflicted upon him, from his pounding head down to the muffled thump of his own feet on the mulchy ground; his arms flashed at the sides of his vision, sweat beaded and itched on his forehead, the bleeding cut that ran down his left forearm pulsed hotly, and he was incapable of reacting to any of it.

This was the most agonizing claustrophobia imaginable. He thrashed and screamed and punched and bit at nothing at all; he was bound inside his own head like a webbed fly. And he wasn't alone in here, either. A throbbing, red-hot presence sat alongside his cognition, alien to him but perilously intimate. It was heavy and well-formed, with sharp corners that dug into the small space still allowed him, and when it spoke, it was with his own voice:

"Give it up, Pine Tree." Bill panted and swatted at a low springy branch. "You're really starting to get on my nerves." He finally raised Dipper's hand to wipe sweat from beneath their hairline. Bill had kept his pace tightly controlled until certain that they were beyond the hearing of those they'd left behind, and then began tearing through the underbrush in a mad dash. The surge of _schadenfreude_ at seeing the demon drop his cool façade in favor of a dead sprint was something Dipper had desperately needed, and after all these years, Bill's unfamiliarity with mammalian physiology was still clear to see. He was flushed and gasping, drained by Dipper's sleepless night, and with a tendency to expend his energy in inefficient bursts that ended only when low blood oxygen forced it of him. He was making good time, but had no sense for the markers that indicate a human body is close to losing consciousness.

Dipper did, though, and he waited anxiously for it to happen. Screw the long-term consequences of passing out breathlessly; screw his life and existence and his chances of making it back home alive, ever.

All he could think clearly about was the hurt he had inflicted, by intention or not. His weight had been thrown around with intent to maim or kill his friends, his _sister,_ and he'd had to look into their eyes as he did it. He was repulsed by the feeling of himself, heavy and respiring and dangerously solid; he had never before realized that his body was such a profane and compromised thing.

He would wait until Bill was forced to sleep, and if he could find a way to take control again, he would kill both of them.

Bill was turning back up to a stumbling run, and despite his paralyzing despair, Dipper had the bitter presence of mind to remark, _You don't look so good, Bill._

"Aw, Pine Tree," Bill cooed in return, in between hiccoughing gasps as he crawled on his belly over a mushy fallen log. "I didn't know you cared."

His voice was ragged underneath its sneer. He crested the trunk and rolled exhaustedly down the other side into a mass of rotting bark, where he lay panting on his back. Bill let his eyes rest on the deep field of branches and lateral sunlight above them, so that was what Dipper looked at too while he waited for the demon to push himself up into a sitting position against the tree. _What's the rush? It almost looks like you're worried about something._

"Hah!" Bill barked. He wiped snot from beneath Dipper's nose with the back of his hand. "Kid, you wish. You and your idiot friends didn't even know you were playing my game until you'd already lost. I'm going to pick up my prize."

 _If you'd already won you wouldn't be running._

Bill drawled, "Sure, Pine Tree, keep trying to psychoanalyze the unfathomable being from outside of consciousness. Maybe it'll shut you up for a while." He spat sloppily on the ground and pressed a hand to the fallen tree to stand, but paused as a guttural squawk sounded from nearby. The white crow that Beatrice had found rapport with steadied itself on a swaying bough and turned its head sideways to pierce Bill with its gaze.

For a second, Dipper's heart soared. _I'm here!_ he tried to cry out, _Tell them I'm here!,_ but of course his voice was nothing. Bill spoke instead, words spat out as the hot red presence alongside Dipper's mind grew hotter with anger: "Well, look who decided to show his face again!" The crow raised its beak imperiously. "That was a pretty dirty trick to warn Bluebird back there. Who do you think you are?"

The crow made no sound, but looked on with an expression that strongly resembled disdain, and flew away again, not in the direction from which they'd come, but the one in which they were going. Dipper watched it go with mute dismay, but Bill shot a sneering smile at its form as it disappeared through a sheet of sunlight.

"Busybody," he muttered, and shoved Dipper's bruised and bleeding body away from the ground again, to push on into the wild.

–

Greg liked Wendy a lot, but he really couldn't shake the feeling that her being with them had made everything less focused, somehow. Everything was wild and confusing at first when Mabel started to cry, and Wendy stooped in to hold her up while Sara and Beatrice stood close by her, and they cried too, just a little, even though they tried not to. A big group of older kids, crying. Greg could see. He stood patiently at the side with Robbie until Mabel sniffed and dried up and finally laughed a little bit and called all of them sloppy messes, and that made the rest of them laugh too and they all four pulled together in a big hug. Greg wondered if he should join in, but he felt – what was the word. Reserved. He was happy they were happy, but he did not feel that a hug would accomplish what he was most concerned about. This was a very new feeling.

Now that Mabel could stand up again, she was ready to tell the story of what happened. Greg thought it was strange that her story only started from the events of the morning, but he put his trust in her. Wendy stood with her face in her hands to hear it, and then Robbie woke up halfway through and started asking questions about the stuff he'd missed and she had to repeat most of it. Greg listened without saying much. He was conflicted. Mabel's story was Important to be sure, but he privately thought she was forgetting something even more Important. Of course Mabel was thinking about Dipper, he reasoned, and of course Sara and Beatrice had a lot to say about the crazy things that had happened since they all woke up.

But still. There was a big empty place in the air between all of them which Greg wondered if he was the only one he could see, an empty space which was tall and thin and wore a cape and would have told Wendy to stop interjecting Mabel's story with low _"Fuuuuck"_ s if he had been here. Sometimes Greg thought he could see something move out of the corner of his eye, and the part of his mind which was used to it expected that he would feel his brother's hand on his shoulder, but nothing ever came. Each time it didn't, he felt like someone had squeezed his ribs and didn't care if it hurt him.

He kept it together, of course, because that was what everyone needed. Jason Funderburker asked, _"Rorrup?"_ and Greg patted him on the head to reassure him that he was doing okay. But he would be a lot more okay when they finally started moving.

Now Mabel seemed like she'd said everything she wanted to say, but there were still a lot of questions to ask. "So…" Wendy's friend Robbie scratched the bottom of his long chin. He'd gotten better from his bump on the head really fast when he saw Beatrice, and had started talking an awful lot since then. "Bill survived the last time you two were in Gravity Falls together because – he was hiding out in Dipper? That little punk." Wendy smacked him.

Sara leaned against the tree where Greg had been hidden before. "So where's he going now?"

Mabel gave a shrug. Her face was red; Greg thought she seemed nervous with being the person everybody thought could answer questions. Dipper was usually the one who did that. It was such a sad thought.

"He left in the same direction we've been headed for like three days." Beatrice swung her bat in a little circle. "So probably Gravity Falls."

Robbie perked up. "Yeah, yeah, like – you said Dipstick thought this was all because of Stan's portal or something –"

"Oy, only people who like him are allowed to call him that," Wendy warned.

"– so like, it totally makes sense that that's where Bill would want to be too, right. It's like… returning to the scene of the crime." He gave Beatrice an admiring smile. "You might be brilliant, has anyone ever told you that?" Behind him, Wendy gagged, while Beatrice grimaced at his face.

That made a break in the conversation, so Greg thought it was a good time to bring up, "But we haven't talked about –"

He guessed Wendy hadn't heard him talk. She said, "What do we do, though? Try to catch him?"

"Do you have handcuffs?" Sara asked. Wendy raised an eyebrow. "Yeah, so – I don't think we can catch anyone."

Robbie raised his hand. "We could dig, like, a tiger pit," he said, and shot Beatrice a look that she ignored.

She said, "What'll the shovel be made out of? Some rope that we also don't have?" Robbie sulked.

Greg knew they weren't overlooking him on purpose. He blinked and smiled and began again, "But also we still have to remember –"

"Right, well," Sara said tiredily, and pushed herself away from the tree. "We can't do anything at all from this far behind, so –"

"He's got like an hour on us by now," Beatrice said, but she also stood up straight.

Greg said, "But –"

Sara asked, "What's up, Greg?" but she didn't look at him. She was busy picking up one of the backpacks from the ground. Mabel grabbed another one and Wendy grabbed her axe from out of a tree and shoved Robbie to get moving, and they all turned with their eyes on the upstream bank. Greg watched them with his mouth open. Sara already didn't even seem like she remembered asking him how he was. She stood up and just started walking. Dry twirling blackberry branches cracked under her shoes.

How? How could nobody be _thinking_ about it when everything reminded?

Greg hadn't expected his voice to come out so hot: _"No!"_ It wasn't a word that was answering a question or that even really knew what it was trying to say; it was just the best he could do to put out everything he was feeling in as few letters as possible. Everyone stopped when they heard it and so did he. He curled his hands and blinked fast to see straight: "No! That's not everything! That's not everything that happened! How could you all forget!"

Beatrice blinked at him. "Forget?"

"Wirt!" Greg scrunched his face after he said his brother's name, because it made his nose feel pinched and watery. Beatrice's eyes changed from confused to wide and shocked. He ran a hand under his eye. "We have to find Wirt too!"

Wendy looked at Sara, and then at Mabel. "What's a Wirt?"

Nobody had said anything. Wendy didn't even knew Wirt was a _thing_. Greg tried to take a deep breath but his chest felt too small for it. He breathed shallow and short and then sat down on the ground. Out of the corner of his eye, Beatrice turned away with a hand on her mouth while Sara stepped toward him.

"Greg," she said, "we didn't forget –" But her voice was so small and thin.

Of everybody, Sara was the person he thought would never lie to him about something important. "You _did_ forget," he hiccupped. It had never been this hard to not cry. He didn't know how they were going to save Wirt but – he was the youngest. Someone older had always, always been able to help him solve problems before, every single time. Now this was the biggest problem that had ever happened, and he knew he couldn't do it on his own, and everybody _forgot._ He put his face in his hands and tried to breathe regular.

All there was to hear was dry leaves and quiet birds, until a vine crunched and someone put their weight on the ground in front of him. "Greg?" It was Mabel. "Bud. Duder. Gregarino?" He sniffed and finally looked up. She was on her knees. She wasn't trying to smile; there was wetness in the corners of her eyes.

She didn't say anything, but she pressed her lips together really hard and then opened up her arms wide, in a way that felt like a question. Greg looked down at his hands, and then up at hers. There was blood that ran from the edge of her sleeve down to her pinky. Her fingers trembled. He'd spent all night feeling the way she looked. It hurt so much worse than a cut.

He dropped his eyes, but leaned in forehead-first. Shadow came over him as she wrapped her arms around his back and put her face in his hair. He grabbed handfuls of her sweater and squeezed his eyes shut. "Awh, Greg," she finally spluttered, and sniffed. Her shoulders shook when she did. "We're just a c-couple of dumb lost kids without them, aren't we?" He nodded slightly against her chest. "I'm so sorry." He held on tighter and she squeezed back in a way that said she wouldn't let go until he wanted her to. He peeped an eye open and looked over her arm to where Beatrice stood. She was facing away with her hand over her mouth. He wished he hadn't yelled.

Mabel held him there until the tears in the corners of his eyes started to itch, and he wiped them away with her sleeve. "Heh," Mabel laughed, just a little. "So – should we go get our brothers back from the weird monsters that took them away?"

Greg pulled back, twisting a knuckle under his eye. "…Yeah." Mabel put out a hand for him, and he took it. "Yeah," he said again when he did. "Yeah, we should do that." When he stood up, Mabel did too, and she raised their clasped hands with small triumph. Sara smiled wanly. Beatrice looked them and turned away again.

They finally left the clearing when the sun was fully in the sky above the trees. The day was bright and the world was full of beasts, and Greg and Mabel walked together, each thinking their own thoughts about how to find them and bring them home.

–

The white crow drew in its wings to dive beneath the canopy of trees and into a thick dark pine covert with whelming blackberry tangles at its base. It barely stopped itself by clasping on to a whippy branch, and swayed there with wings wide open until it regained its balance. The light was dim and the air was misty and smelled of rot. "We need to talk!" it cried as the branch slowed.

The caretaker, who was of the coppice and held himself quiet within its dayless green heart, did not stir. He was listening to something else. Since the day began to dawn over the woods, he had found himself something like tired, and desired to rest during the sunlight hours which did not easily accommodate him. The she-wolf had bowed and left him repose, but real sleep, of course, was one of the many things the Edelwood had taken away from him now. Instead, he found a dark place and took root there, and let his oil seep down into the earth, and when he closed his eyes they reopened in a hundred new places touched by light.

There was a timelessness to this new way of being, and at the end of the first night he felt already as though he had known it for years. Despite his perspective, though, a very small and innocuous place pulled disproportionately at his awareness – the grove of dead trees where he had left himself no eyes or ears, for fear of what they would reveal. He couldn't help looking back on it, again and again, probing at its edges though he knew he should not; the problems hidden there were of his old life, and he would be wise to let them lie.

Still, rumors revealed themselves to him. Trees murmured about a bad feeling for which they had no language, and birds went to sky with their feathers frazzled by scare. The caretaker felt feet moving against his earth in violent patterns — weights that collided with others, bodies that fell and rose and fell again. A struggle. If the wolf had been with him she would have said it was no concern of his, but he was alone, and even with the entire world to attend he could not help monitoring those invisible movements, and wondering, and waiting.

He hoped Greg was okay.

And then it stopped. Whatever quiet battle had raged inside the blind woods ended, and what emerged on the other side was Dipper, of all people, with his hands in his pockets and blood dripping down his arm. The caretaker watched him progress from an easy, limping walk to a mad dash, muttering nonsense and pushing through thickets and other obstacles that any reasonable person would have taken the smallest of detours to avoid, at the cost of seconds. He slapped his arms carelessly around so that they bruised, his clothes tore, and no matter how foul his circumstances, a madman's smile stayed plastered across his face. The black beast followed him through each tree's eyes, trying to understand, fighting a stirring, betrayed feeling. He recalled grabbing Dipper, accusing him, and remembered the exhausted pain in his once-friend's eyes. Something had gone wrong since then, exactly as he'd feared back when he was still allowed fear. He knew he should not involve himself, for he was greater than that now, but the longer he watched, the more agitated he felt.

 _This is not right._ It was not his place to say. _Something should be done._

The crow had been watching, too, flitting between the trees along their erstwhile ally's arrow-straight path. At one point it brought itself to attention, and Dipper responded to that action with a very unusual question about some dirty trick or another. The crow said nothing in response, and finally took wing and came to the concealed thicket with its request for audience.

"This is an urgently important matter," the crow emphasized, but still the caretaker did not rouse. If that gave a noble impression, it was incidental. Truthfully, he just didn't know what to say.

The crow drew its head back, waiting. "Oh, don't tell me you're playing dumb again," it cried after he failed for another moment to respond. "I told you last night that you are the only thing in this wood in a position to help avert disaster, and _disaster is imminent._ Surely you've been watching?"

In the green pine shadow, a dim light flickered. Two eyes opened slowly. _I do not understand it._

"It's _Bill,"_ the crow spat. "There's no understanding to be had." The caretaker tipped his head without comprehension, and the crow flapped its wings madly. "Bill Cipher! The madcap little expression of Dreaming itself, who expends all the boundless creative energy of the multiverse on ruining existence for everyone else! For _gods'_ sake, child, you weren't given some sort of introduction to the major players in this mess after I left last night?" The big eyes blinked once, slowly. "I should never have trusted that wolf to do a demon's job. What you need to know right now is that our timeline has just shifted to _immediately._ He's loose, and if he reaches the old man before your friends do, not only will they probably die, but I will _certainly_ be trapped in this form for all of eternity. Do you understand that, you strange mute thing?"

The caretaker did understand the stakes, if not their circumstances. Somewhere far away, Dipper still tromped on an unflinching path through the forest, shuddering and speaking aloud to no one. He slapped himself hard across the face, and laughed uproariously at the blood that rushed to the place of impact. As if it knew what he saw, the crow said, "Yes, that's him. Pine Tree has become the first casualty, then. The others will die much more instantly when he gets what he wants — if that's a plus or a minus in your mind, I can't presume to know."

The beast turned to look at the bird, but still kept his awareness on the man who pushed through the wood, his face flushed and hollowly joyful. This wasn't Dipper? Where, then, had Dipper gone? It was upsetting that something as personal as a face could be stolen. Unjust. There was a bubbling feeling of discontent in his silhouette. He thought again of the evening before, which had been a hundred years ago, and how in his anger he had hurt Dipper and in turn blamed him for hurt which perhaps hadn't really been his fault.

He felt shame. He thought of his small brother, and of Mabel who had made herself such a friend to him. He remembered the warmth of Beatrice's lap as she held him while he was laid low, and of Sara who had stood her ground to protect the others from him when the blackberries grew thick and he did not yet understand what he had become. The oil inside him was cold, but he felt warm to think on them. They offered such kind thoughts, and bright memories. The crow watched from the bowed branch, and lifted its feathers.

"Are you going to do something, then?" it demanded.

Its words took the caretaker out of his rumination. He reluctantly reminded himself, _I am not supposed to interfere._

The crow bristled. "I will skin that damned dog. Of course you have to interfere! It's that or be another toy king of the disordered mess that's left after the Mindscape floods out of this dammed world in a few days' time!" In the rear of the black beast's mind, footsteps hit the ground again. A face finally emerged from the quiet bank of trees - haughty and freckled, framed by red hair, but not Beatrice. It was the girl he had seen the night before, still holding tight to her axe. She was followed by a sallow-faced young man in need of a haircut, and Sara, and Beatrice herself, and finally by Mabel and Greg, who held hands and had faint tears on their cheeks. The caretaker shuddered.

They were all okay. Greg was alright, and his every step was a blessing on the earth. The beast might have wept if the crow had not still been watching. The bird did not ask its question again, but narrowed its eyes and stared into the dark wood as hard as any bird can.

Slowly, the wind began to rise. Branches tilted and jumped and the squirrels among them paused to consider a change in the air. The white crow looked upward. The sky's luminosity dimmed and the shadows along the forest floor grew more profound. Deer tucked themselves into hillsides and hollows as the clouds rolled in.

The wilderness sighed.

In the pinewood, a bright-eyed shadow unfurled, twisting and rising from the low darkness near the earth to the high thin air. He rose past the crow in its perch until his antlers touched and tangled with the thin sweeping branches at the trees' summits, and then pulled his roots from the ground one by one, churning the black soil and giving it richness to remember him by. The clouds swelled when he breathed and the pressure in the air dropped. Leaves shivered and prey animals ran to their dens, and far away, Greg raised his wide eyes to the sky, as if he knew.

The crow nodded once, and then took to the air, a sharp white shape against the darkening atmosphere. The caretaker watched him go.

He stepped out into the light.

–

It was raining, and they were being followed.

Dipper knew this for certain from the moment that the clouds began to roll in across the midmorning sky. He felt it in the changed direction of the wind, the birds that went silent and the rain that began to _tik_ at an increasing pace against the leaves. He could not turn to search for the source of his unease, and it gave the impression of ineludibility. It was as though the woods themselves were watching.

If Bill felt the same, he gave no indication of it. The demon had a laser-focus forward, thumping with increasing exhaustion across or through any obstacle that appeared. Dipper had lost track of the time long ago. The shadows had been close to their shortest before it became overcast, but now the land was cast in gray tones that defied his internal clock. He was wet and scratched and bruised and hungry – he was so hungry – and it was all so strangely boring when he had no control over any of it. When he had exhausted himself with fighting and obsessing over every untended pain and pulse, there was little left to do but mentally retreat and regard everything from a dead man's perspective.

 _Why am I stuck here?_ he wondered.

"I wouldn't kick you out if I could, Pines," Bill huffed in response, the first words he'd shared with him in what must have been an hour or more now. The demon spoke almost constantly, of course, but most of it was a stream of consciousness describing his desire to break everything he saw, and Dipper had started filtering it out long ago. "Things are different this time."

 _What do you mean?_

"Well," Bill swatted away a holly sprig and disregarded the spines, "way back the first time, it was really just a visit. A fun trade! I take your place for a day and you, eh, go haunt your sister or something. Simple stuff. Until, you know, Sixer and his idiot brother killed me." He spat. "Ha ha ha – I mean, it's actually kind of funny when you think about it, right? If Fordsy had just let me stomp your little head into the ground before he took his dive back into the portal –"

The ground beneath them was on a decline, and the clay soil had begun to soften to mud in the rain. Bill stepped indelicately, and Dipper's foot shot out from beneath them. They hit the ground with a painful twist that made Bill bark in laughter.

"HA! Ha ha ha ha…" Trembling, he stood again without bothering to look at their leg, and kept walking in exactly the same manner as before. There was a deep horrid pulse in his ankle at every step that Dipper struggled to ignore. "What I'm getting at, Pines," he continued, as if nothing had happened, "is that I'm not a guest anymore, I'm a _resident._ You're the source of all of me that's left in the Multiverse – and you did me a real solid there, by the way, I'm not sure I've said that before. When things slow down later, remind me to deglove one of your hands as a thank-you." A hefty raindrop landed on the very top of their scalp and dribbled through their hair. "Now we're fitted in here all snug together – isn't it sweet? I guess it means I can't muscle you out anymore, but why would I want to? Even your disembodied spirit has managed to ruin my plans before! I kind of like listening to you struggle, anyway." Bill winked as though Dipper could see him do it. "Now, what do we have here…?"

At the bottom of the slope, the ground leveled, and then dropped off sharply. The fall was bald clay dotted with thin crooked trees and their knotty roots, close to a hundred feet down at a sharp angle. Bill narrowed their eyes at it and rubbed their chin exaggeratedly. He took a few steps one way, and then the other and finally said, "Hey, Pine Tree! Make yourself useful. How long would it take a human to go around this?"

 _How am I supposed to know? You're looking at my feet._ Bill gracelessly swung his head in both directions along the ridge, identically lined with trees. _I have no idea. Could be hours or more to go down the long way._

He felt immediate unease that Bill seemed to perk up at hearing that. "Really?" Dipper said nothing. "Wow. This hill would really slow someone down, then." He blinked at the far-away ground, wearing the same vacant smile as always.

Then he threw them off of the cliff.

They hit the slope on their side and started tumbling. Immediately, there was pressing pain; Dipper recognized it as the feeling of having the wind knocked out of them, but Bill did not seem overly concerned with correcting it. He didn't even raise their hands to protect their head, and they fell loose as a ragdoll between sparse ferns and barely-missed roots and rocky outcroppings. Dipper could not close his eyes, and the world rotated before him in flashes of stark white and deep brown and banging red pain. Bill laughed as they fell.

And then it stopped, and Dipper hardly noticed because his vision was still swirling. They were on their back in a patch of woodsorrel, and Bill finally gasped to pull oxygen back into their aching body. Their vision sharpened and steadied, and all there was to see was the dark gray sky, and the tree trunks like Corinthian columns. There were crescent slices of pain in their flesh and aching soft tissue everywhere. Their head thudded.

"Wow," Bill panted, "what a trip." He had little of the usual force in his voice. Their eyelids drooped, and he forced them back open. "Gotta… just…" Limply, he lifted an arm and dropped it again. "Ah, hell." Again, their eyes closed. The relief was instant. "Pine Tree. You're so. Grossly. Corporeal."

A weak twitch of the finger, and then nothing.

Dipper woke first, at some unknowable point in the future, unknowable because he could not open his eyes to see the light around them. He ached in fashions both acute and dull, and there were itching rain-tracks on his face and swollen cuts in his legs and his mouth was dry as a bone, but now there was a new and unfamiliar sensation as well. He had the sense of being wrapped in something cold and hard. A small light thing brushed over and over against his neck.

 _What the hell?_ Somewhere he could not see, a crow cawed. Bill started at the noise and he opened their eyes.

It was still day, but the quality of light was beginning to grow thinner. It had the feeling of mid-afternoon. "Ah, what's…?" The demon squinted blearily at their surroundings before turning to look at their arm. Heavy black vines had begun to sprout from the earth where they lay, spiraling around their arms and neck and beginning to trap their legs as well from the ankle up. Deep red leaves sprouted from dark stems. Bill narrowed his eyes at them as someone asked, "How have you been then, Bill?"

Bill snapped upward. Far out of reach in a tree sat the big white crow again. He was perturbed to hear it speak – but it seemed less that the bird had learned English than that he quite suddenly knew Crow. Or Bill did, perhaps. The demon licked their lips. "Things have been going really well for me, actually!" he said through bared teeth. "Why don't you come down here and give me a hand with these vines –"

"I will be staying up here, thank you," the crow said with flat disapproval. "I of all people should know to keep out of your arm's reach."

"You're a snotty little thing," Bill shot back, struggling against the wood. "Why do you think you know me?"

The crow pulled its head back and to the side, as if slightly repulsed. "Your unique perniciousness shines clear through any skin you could choose to wear," it said. "I'm not surprised you don't recognize me, though. As the least attention-seeking member of our family, you'll find I blend into native populations much more easily."

Bill froze. Dipper was dumbfounded. He could feel the demon's mental processes whirring hot for a second while he himself tried to understand what was meant by the crow's words, until he was interrupted by Bill's slow smile and coughing laugh:

"Ha! Ha ha ha ha –!" Bill writhed in his binds. "Oh, Willie! Will Naught, you sly dog, that's really you, isn't it?" The crow did not respond and it did not look happy. "Holy wow, long time no see! I mean, I always figured you'd end up sticking your nose in my business again eventually but – not like this! Look at you! You're _tiny!"_ The bird bristled. "Oh, honestly, this is just too sad. You poor bastard, have you been stuck here this whole time? What happened to you?!"

"An unfortunately-timed sabbatical," it said coolly, while Bill continued to laugh on the ground. "I was here for recreational purposes when last week's mess took place and found the form I'd chosen somewhat incapable of – leaving. Or doing much of anything. What with reality itself being reduced down to this awful wood, and all." It looked on with deepening dislike as Bill failed to quell his laughter. "Yes, laugh it up, Bill! Meanwhile, you're covered in mud, bleeding out of the human teenager you've tied yourself to for the rest of eternity! _Very_ dignified. _You're_ doing _much_ better."

"Ah, Willie," Bill said, wiping his eye on his shoulder. "Willie, Will, Wilhelm, brother of mine – you know, I'm happy to see you! It's so important when families can come together on important occasions! Me, for example, I'm about to take over the universe!"

The crow gave every indication of being completely over it. "As you've said every other century for the last four and a half million years."

"This time, though!" Bill grinned widely. "This time it's really happening! And you know that, and I know you know that, because if you weren't scared you wouldn't have bothered allying yourself with a bunch of _children."_ The crow glowered. "Give it up, Willie. Honestly, I could just stay here. No need to get up! The situation will resolve itself. I've already _won."_

"Yes, Pine Tree wasn't convinced by that line either," the crow said lightly, and Dipper was shocked to be acknowledged for something he'd never been able to say out loud. "There's still time to stop the portal from breaking open and that is exactly what's going to happen. I'm sorry, Bill, but we simply can't allow you to keep going."

Dipper wondered, _We?_ at the same time that Bill spat, "And who's _we?"_

In response, the air seemed to grow colder, and the clouds thickened and turned in the sky. The rain spat down hard. Shadows became deep in the ending afternoon, and in the darkness between the trees, two enormous bright eyes turned to look at them. The giant thing in the woods drew blackness up around itself and pulled shadows out into the dim daylight when it stepped forward. It was nothing but a shape, faceless, lean and long and crowned in branches. Blackberry bushes grew where it touched the ground.

 _Wirt._ The thought was so potent Dipper could imagine it falling from his lips as easily as a breath, but of course nothing came. _Oh my God. What did they do to you?_ If the thing knew his unspoken words as well as the crow did, it gave no indication. It inclined its head toward Dipper's body, and the vines began to grow thick and fast. _Wirt, it's me!_ A leaf curled gently against his jaw.

"Ahh." Bill's eyes widened, thoughtless to the encroaching plants. "So there he is, then! Were you party to ruining this part of my plan, Willie, or did he do that all on his own?"

"You mean the last-minute change in caretaker? He did that himself, actually."

"Wonderful," Bill hissed, beginning to push back against the Edelwood. He fixed his eyes on the black thing, standing as tall as a tree before them: "I left your brother dead on the ground! Took that adorable smile right with me! It should have been you!" The dark beast drew up in anger. The wind pushed immediately harsh across the base of the embankment where they lay, and the vine closest to their throat tightened.

"He knows you're lying," the crow said. "Why bother?"

"It's fun," Bill grinned and panted, twisting away from the strangling leaves. "Really, though! Out of all your friends – even Pine Tree! – you really managed to chap my ass the worst, Woodwind!" The creature blinked once, and slowly. "It was going to be a heck of a lot easier to co-rule our combined realms with the squirt! Just give him a bucket of rocks and stick him in the corner while ol' Uncle Bill does the talking. Who says kids are hard?" Bill curled their white-knuckled hand against the wet ground. "But you felt like you really had to step in, huh? Waste my time and effort, rob Candy Pants of his shot at living through the end of the world – yeah, you're a real hero!" Again, the wind blasted in at them and then slowed. This time, a blackberry vine sprouted at their hip and began to dig into the denim there. Bill was squeezing their fist so tight that it felt hot. "Now I've got _this_ circus clown to keep under control instead! Big guy who thinks he knows better than the rest of us 'cause some backwater dimension decided to adopt him –"

Bill jerked, snagged the nearest blackberry vine with their right hand, and wrenched it away. Dipper felt pain lance up his forearm. His fingers burned and throbbed like they'd been caught and released from a vice, and the thorns cut neatly into his palm. Something flickered blue in the corner of his vision and then erupted; Bill looked down in triumph to where the bramble was caught in his fist, engulfed in blue flame. He grinned wickedly.

"But this miserable little universe has _nothing_ on me!" he cried as the unnatural fire curled up and down the green and black binds that held their body close to the ground. The blackberries burned, but the Edelwood retreated from the flame, falling limply away in defeat. The crow squawked and flapped its wings, but the black monster stood still and staring. Bill kicked and shrugged and pushed himself, finally, up into a sitting position, where he sat panting. "If you'd been polite I might have extended you some courtesy as a figurehead in our next life, but now you've pissed me off, Woodwind!" he spat. Blue fire still licked burning hot around the fist the he rose in demonstration. Its light touched the dull earth and glowed in the misty air. "So here's what you're going to do. From here on out, you're going to mind your own business! You're going to _intensely_ ignore that stupid animal who calls himself my brother, and maybe, if you're lucky, I'll leave you a corner to play sandbox in when this is all over! Understand? Because if you don't –"

Bill lunged forward and grabbed a fern. It withered immediately and the fire spread from its fronds up the trunk of the thin young tree that it shared a base with. Bright light flared in the space between them, and the black monster stepped away. Bill stood slowly with their hurt legs and bleeding body and throbbing hands, and lowered their head and still-enkindled fist.

"If you don't, I will _burn your world."_

He looked straight at the huge faceless monster with light in its eyes, where Dipper could find no sign of his friend. The sky deepened and rain fell harder, but Bill's fire still burned. He gave a twisted grin.

"And _you,"_ he shot to the side, where the crow sat watching. "You stay out of it too, or I will _crush_ your little hollow bones with these big hands Pine Tree was kind enough to let me borrow. Capisce?" The white bird did not say anything, nor did it move. It blinked once, sideways, and maintained eye contact with Bill until he spat and turned away himself.

"Now get out of my way," he muttered, and marched past the both of them through the mud. Dipper thought they would feel tightening creepers around their legs again, but nothing came. The shape of the black monster still lingered in the corner of his eye where Bill would not directly look.

 _Please, Wirt…_

There was nothing said, and nothing found. Bill shoved Dipper's broken body forward once more into the maturing darkness of the wood, with hot light to keep the shadows at bay.


	18. A Bed of Ferns

**For what it's worth, it was quite a feat that I managed to keep this chapter under 15k words. Make yourself some tea and settle in, kids, this is gonna be a long one. Consider pulling out Florence + The Machine's Cosmic Love toward the end for mood.**

* * *

The wolf arrived furious at the foot of the moss throne. Self-imposed respect kept her from saying so outright, but it was communicated clearly enough in her flattened profile and wide golden eyes. She leapt over the bramble, panting and with her fur clumped by water. Upon landing in the mud she took a single look at him, cast her gaze to the ground, and uttered, "That damned crow."

The caretaker was only half-listening, and not just because he had been anticipating this reaction while observing her warpath toward him; his attention was in a dozen other, more important places, cut between so many objects of interest at once that he felt he might dissipate trying to watch all of them. The storm intensified as night separated itself fully from evening. When the crow left and the day ended, he had wrapped himself in thorns and loam at the base of a mighty conifer, and in the dark, he closed his eyes to see.

A bullfrog. A campfire. Warm skin held against his rough bark. He was there with them, and they were dry and safe and all was well, for now.

Yes.

The wolf knew what he was doing. Her chest heaved as she watched him fail to respond, and she shuddered and shook water from her back when near thunder moved the treetops. "I should never have left you alone," she began, starting to pace in circles around the place he had taken root. Her words were deferential enough not to place blame anywhere but with herself, and the invitation for him to agree with her was made clear. "You are only a child, of course the demon managed to pull you into his family squabble –"

Her words made it terribly difficult to concentrate. In the instant before he opened his eyes, the caretaker had the irritated thought that the wolf had to have been much younger than he had been in his old life. Maybe even younger than Greg. In the likeness of an older sibling, he very nearly said so to put her in her place, but remembered himself in time, recomposed, and declined to react at all. Pieces were moving all around him and he did not want to start an argument. Any unobservant moment was one in which something disastrous could happen.

Again he looked out. He saw the shack on the outskirts of the quiet town, still alight, still alive with words he couldn't hear and wouldn't have understood if he could. It shone like a beacon in the stormy night. The stranger in Dipper's skin pushed relentlessly on through the pouring woods leagues away, sleepless, carrying torturous fire in his hand to light the path. Another stranger, the big man who had almost been made into dinner the night before, struggled through the same storm, searching for shelter as he hiked with a child on his back. The caretaker didn't know for sure whether that one was friend or foe, but in a fit of sympathy he still chose to sweep the rain away from where he walked. He had a kid with him, after all. The dark beast counted both men's steps, every one determinedly westward. The shack must be the end of the road; it was where all roads ended. Something underground pulsed and pushed the earth around it.

It was a far happier thing to look to the far side of the storm. Nearly a world away from the foul weather, Greg sat at the edge of the firelight beneath a modest dogwood, and the caretaker felt him as near as if he were huddled in his arms. The little boy's weight was warm and kind, and it would not be touched by rain tonight, not if his big brother had anything to say about it. The whole group was there with him, still whole and unharmed.

 _"Maple, do you still have your toy?"_ Greg asked.

Mabel had a mouthful of potato. She looked up at him with a warm glow from the fire on her face. _"My wha'? Oh, my pho'e."_ She swallowed. _"I think it's dead, buddy, I'm sorry."_

 _"Oh. That's okay."_

Wendy gave the two of them a long look. _"You ever gonna tell him he says your name wrong, Mabel?"_

 _"I don't mind,"_ Mabel said.

Greg was gently puzzled. _"I thought you were doing it wrong._ Mabel _isn't a real word."_

 _"'Greg' isn't really a word either,"_ Sara said across the fire pit.

 _"Whoa."_ And Greg sat back against the dogwood with a look like he had a lot to think about. The scene was so familiar, so comforting and good. In embodying the tree at his brother's back, and trying to forget the other missing face among them, the caretaker could almost pretend that nothing had changed since he first left them, and he laughed ruefully at the thought.

"Little king…"

His moment of peace was not destined to last. He lost clear vision of the others when he opened his eyes to look at the wolf, who sat with her sad yellow gaze by a wild-growing rhododendron. "You must be aware that the demon only invoked your friends' names so you will act on his behalf," she intoned slowly. "He does not care about them, and you know you cannot keep doing this."

He didn't ask what _this_ was, and really, he wasn't so sure he knew anything of the sort. _Why does it matter what he cares about,_ he pondered, reflecting on his friends who sat together in the light, _if his goals align with ours?_

The wolf said stiffly, "My concern is the means, not the ends." Hard wind lashed the tree branches and carried rain to the forest floor where they lurked. "But the Edelwood chose you, and so I choose not to believe you would do anything as _childish_ as choose favorite players in someone else's game." He had never known wolves were capable of such vicious sarcasm. "Just as I'm _certain_ you've let the rain fall indiscriminately tonight." The caretaker decided not to answer, even as he checked the edges of the clouds to be sure they were not in danger of crossing the sky above the faraway campfire. The wolf snapped her head up and sniffed the air to follow the breeze, and then growled slightly. "As I thought."

In his divided attention and deep concern, his patience felt thin. _What am I supposed to do?_ The wolf pricked her ears forward. _I can't stop myself from caring. I can't care without wanting to change things!_

"As I said last night. What you want no longer matters." The wolf sat down, proud-chested, her tail wrapped neat around her paws. Quiet lightning flashed briefly behind the clouds and made pools on the ground. "Your place is not to play _politics_. You cultivate the woods. That is all."

 _Even if it means the end of the world?_

"Defense of domain is any king's right, but as loathsome Cipher is, he has not actually done anything to harm yours yet."

The cold certainty in her voice made him want to shout. If he was only allowed to react, not only would he be too late to prevent disaster, he would go mad with anxiety in the meantime. He still felt the core of treelike stoicism that he'd discovered in himself when he lost everything else, but those lost things were already starting to unearth from where he'd buried them in the soil: stress and affection and dread for the future and all such human floods inundated him by hidden waterways which sprung from memories of hands, and home, and his own face in the mirror. He remembered what he had looked like, mostly; that hadn't been true the night before, and it made everything different, somehow.

 _What makes you the expert?_ The tone of his question was plainly immature. _You say you know best, but I'm the one it chose. Not you._

The wolf must have remembered her own black-oil reticence. She didn't rise to the bait, but her tail twitched. "Watch yourself, pup. I wore that crown for three years. I understand the rules far better than you."

 _But you're just an animal._ Her eyes narrowed. _You don't understand what it's like to know you let someone down when they relied on you for everything. I did that once and I won't ever do it again._ Another silent flash of lightning, this one followed by thunder like a faraway train. Light outlined the wolf's hunched form. _Or maybe you do understand. Maybe you know exactly what it's like, and you know what it will do to me if you convince me to let my brother die, so in the end, I'll be just as alone as you –_

That finally broke her front. She growled and bared her fangs, and another sheet of lashing rain fell through the trees across her back. "Insolent thing! How _dare_ you!" She bounded forward once as if to attack and then went back to furious pacing, stiff-tailed and hunched low to the ground. _"This_ is the one who was mantled?! I give all of the loyalty and guidance I have to offer, and he insults me! In the first day, he begins fighting battles that are not his and plays favorites with friends from another life! Not like us! Never in three years did we use the vines to trap rabbits, no matter how hungry we were!" In rage, she tore a thin shrubroot out of the ground with her teeth. Black earth sprayed through the air. "This one is a selfish _whelp!_ Undeserving! Unweaned! Thankless, puerile, _ungrateful_ little –!"

 _"No."_

One word, and the wind stopped like extinguished breath. The rain cut out completely and left dripping, echoing silence in the wake of a voice hollow, multiphonic, doubled or tripled over itself in harmonizing wooden tones. The wolf froze as the black warden of the woods turned toward her, as massive as a cedar tree and tangled from head to toe in elaborate shadows. His gaze was clear, bright blue.

 _No,_ he ordered again, but this time the word did not come aloud. _No more. No more of your rules, and no more calling me a child. You wrote laws for yourself and imposed them on me. It's not fair._

The wolf raised her snout, unblinking, defiant. "It was never fair for any of us," she uttered, but she didn't move, and she didn't break eye contact.

In the sky, troubled clouds cracked and peeled away from the firmament, and autumn moonlight spilled through their faults and dripped with the water down to the forest floor between the wolf and her caretaker. _I won't do it,_ he said. _I won't live that way. I'm not an animal. I can't care and not act, and I won't become a monster so I don't have to care anymore. I won't turn into_ him. Memories of the Beast stirred the very leaves in the trees. _If it weren't my place to choose, I wouldn't be able to. But I can. I get to make the rules now, so… so if you don't like that, you can go._ The wolf lost tension, and rose fully upward into the moonlight, wide-eyed. _You're released from service. I never asked for it anyway. Live your life however you want, do whatever wolves do, and when you die, I'll plant you with your sister, because I promised I would, and that – that's one of_ my _rules._

He turned with small dramatic flair and left by the shadowed path without another word, only stepping off of it again when he'd reached a quiet place, shadowed and dripping, quiet so that he could think. If he looked out across the woods, it was easy to imagine that he could see the gentle distant glow of a campfire among the trees, but when he closed his eyes, he knew it for sure. Wendy was peeling a potato, and Beatrice was talking about _him,_ of all people. He wondered how the conversation had gotten to that point; he'd been terribly distracted.

 _"Terrible stutter,"_ she said, in continuation of what seemed to be a longer spiel. _"Needed a haircut. And the cape – why do we even miss this guy?"_ The others laughed, and his black heart warmed to hear the tenderness beneath her words. If she could pretend not to care, that meant she was doing okay. He still dropped a pine cone on her head in retribution, and then settled his Self inside the embracing dogwood at his sibling's back, where he was comfortable, and all felt well. The half-moon passed overhead and the camp quieted, one by one; Greg fell asleep gradually, a slow curl inward against the trunk and a deepening of breath.

His brother held him close all night.

When the sun began to blanch the horizon to prepare it for dawn, the wolf finally found her caretaker again. He had become crooked and wooden over the hours, and sprouted from his branches dogwood blossoms which fell away when he woke at her approach. She moved slowly, kept her gaze on the ground, and when near enough laid down in the moss and exposed her belly. He watched until she rolled back upright and finally made eye contact.

"What do you need me to do?" she asked.

He didn't answer at first, because he hadn't really expected her to return. The light was filling out in the sky, and he took a step backward to put himself behind the protective treeline before it reached him. He felt Greg stir under the sleeping tree and then fall back asleep. Beatrice, he saw, was awake and wandering through the camp; he wondered why. A drop of water fell from a cedar needle's tip. Miles to the west, a handful of leaves were scooped up clumsily from the ground, crushed, and then smoldered to ash in blue flame.

Of course. He had matters to attend to. He'd let himself forget for a while.

 _Will you watch them for me?_ he asked. The wolf sat up. _My brother and Beatrice and – all of them. Make sure they're safe, in case I can't._ _In case I lose focus, taking care of other things._ She dipped her head respectfully and began to leave. _Wolf?_

The wolf stopped and looked back. The caretaker's eyes seemed to lose some of their glow, compared to the igniting sky. _Thank you._ She blinked and said nothing. _I never asked before. Do you have a name?_

"No," she answered. "Do you?" He did not answer, and she sloped off into the underbrush again, leaving him to the company of the trees and the people between them.

He gave himself until the mass of the sun showed above the trees to stay with his friends who slept around the extinguished campfire. When the dawn finally forced him back into the shadows again, he kept one eye on them even as he turned all others to the source of a solitary blue fire in the distance.

To business, then. He had a demon to waylay.

–

There was something Wirt had said a while back which was now stuck in Beatrice's teeth like a blackberry seed. She didn't remember when he'd said it and she couldn't for the life of her recall its context, but its rhythm in his voice tumbled over and over through her mind: _"The implication of a world which bends itself to our whims is either the most comforting or most terrifying thing imaginable."_ It was such a typical thing to hear from him, simultaneously self-pitying and pretentious, but the longer it turned over in her head, the more she wondered if there wasn't a pearl of surprising – probably accidental – insight hidden in its meat.

There was just a very strange feeling in the air today.

From their outset on the morning Dipper left them, travel promised to be different. How could it not be, with a third of their once-group gone, and as much of its hard-won rapport undermined? Wendy was good and charismatic company and managed to fill the spaces between all of them with broad conversation structured in such a way as to accept anyone who felt like contributing, though no one but Robbie did. It wasn't personal, at least not on Beatrice's part; the weight of having to come up with something to say was almost unimaginable to her mind, and she watched the procession of the day from a place at the far back of her head, where her thoughts washed around loudly enough to obscure her hearing.

It wasn't the same, was the idea she kept returning to. It didn't look right, it didn't feel right; this day was an insulting imitation of what it should have been, she felt certain of that. Their group of six was not the right six. In a good and fair world, there should have been Wirt in Robbie's place ahead of her, clucking like a mother hen at every crude gripe or joke dropped within his brother's earshot, and attempting to make conversation about musicians no one else had ever heard of. There should have been Dipper up ahead of even Wendy, blazing their trail with the trademark grim wariness which underlined everything he said and did, and Sara at his side as the only person who could match his pace. Mabel was supposed to be laughing and ribbing the boys, not staring dead-eyed at the ground while she cradled her cut arm, and instead of walking mutely in line with her, Greg should have been making his rounds between all of them, out of indecision as to who he most wanted to spend his time with. The longer Beatrice dwelled on it, she only barely managed to hold her bitterness behind her teeth, tromping exhausted and sore through their hundredth day in these stupid neverending goddamned woods. She wanted to go home. She wanted everything to be normal again.

It just wasn't _fair._

With so much resentment held inside her and no means by which to vent it, time that day passed at a deathly slow pace, or in great bounding leaps forward through the hours – either or both. Columns of light erected from their tired morning angles and dissipated for the afternoon, only to reappear in eerie peach tones as the sun approached the horizon on the other side of the sky. In an increasingly hilly terrain, inclined just enough along the broad northern-facing slopes to prevent one's foot from coming to rest square beneath the ankle and fostering subtly persistent calf pain in the process, the trees tended to thin alongside their path, and in the windows between, the sky looked as though it were catching fire. Towering storm clouds rolled along the western horizon above a broad expanse of uniformly dark conifers that lined a velvet basin and then rose up again tens of miles away. The far ridge was broken by two dramatic cliffs, shaped like bears' snouts facing off against one other. Wendy stopped the first time she saw them, and motioned to Mabel. They all paused on the side of the hill above the treeline, breathing deeply and saying nothing. The sun cut through beneath the storm clouds in high-intensity orange, and lit the entire sky flat and bright. The clouds were roiling black, and the atmosphere was red. The smells of static and water were thick in the air.

"We should set up camp," Sara said. Beatrice couldn't remember the last time she'd heard her speak all day. "We're going to get rained on." It was an easy conclusion to agree with, but her prediction never ended up manifesting. An hour and a half later they were tucked into a hillside grove where a handful of dogwoods grew among the evergreens, with a crackling fire between them and speared vegetables on to roast. Thunder rumbled in the distance and an occasional stray raindrop made its way to land on someone's arm, but the sky above them remained clear, and the wind kept shifting direction, as if shepherding the storm.

Across the fire from Beatrice, Greg wore an uncharacteristically somber expression. "Maple," he asked at one point, "do you still have your toy?"

Mabel looked up from her potato. "My wha'? Oh, my phoe." She swallowed."I think it's dead, buddy, I'm sorry."

Wendy seemed lightly amused at the exchange. "You ever gonna tell him he says your name wrong, Mabel?"

Mabel flipped a hand. "I don't mind."

"I thought _you_ were doing it wrong." Greg frowned, trying to puzzle things out. "'Mabel' isn't a real word…"

Sara was sitting on a rock on the far side of the fire. She rested her cheek on her fist. "'Greg' isn't really a word either."

The kid looked as though he had never thought of things that way before. "Whoa." Beatrice couldn't help grinning, though she hid it behind her hand. Sudden breeze flooded their campsite as she did, laying down the fire and thrashing the trees. It wasn't cold, but thrillingly warm, like a great breath, or a hug. Beatrice rubbed her arms, feeling a prickle down her back. It was the same wind that had been blowing in since the night before.

"Weird weather," Wendy announced after a moment. "And that screaming stopped last night, did you guys notice? Don't tell me we were the only ones who kept hearing it." Sara mumbled something that Beatrice couldn't hear, while Mabel chewed on the inside of her cheek, and also failed to answer. Wendy sat forward with firelight on the lower half of her face: "I think we should set up a guard rotation tonight." An uneasy ripple passed across everyone's shoulders. "I know, I know," Wendy continued, putting out her palms in surrender. "I didn't want to be the person who brought it up, but there's like a crazy demon out there who definitely wants us dead now, right? As opposed to just the general wilderness which could also kill us while we sleep, but less intentionally."

"But Dip– _Bill."_ Mabel started speaking and then made a hard correction. "Bill is trying to get to Gravity Falls, he practically said –"

"Why would anybody believe what Bill says?" Robbie sounded miffed.

Mabel looked surprised, and then conceding. "He's got a point, for once," Wendy said. "That's a big risk to take. I mean… I know I don't want to take it." She stirred the fire with a branch. "So between us girls, we've got four adults –"

Robbie raised a hand. "Um, I'm literally the oldest person here?"

Wendy didn't even look at him. "Like I said, four adults. That would make two hours' watch for each of us. Sound fair?" There was a weak murmur of assent. Robbie crossed his arms. "Anybody care about the order?" Nobody did. "Then I'll go first." And she sat up coolly with her eyes on the black woods, ready to start her vigil even though everybody was still well awake. Wendy's brand of methodical competence was something they would have once all looked to Sara for, but Sara couldn't have appeared more detached from the planning if she'd tried. She sat with her arms around her knees, eyes half-lidded and mouth firmly closed from offering opinions or input. Mabel was more attentive to the goings-on of the group at large, but she carried the same lowness in her shoulders, the same shirking gaze. Beatrice watched them over the fire with a heavy, sad feeling.

"It was Wirt," Greg said unexpectedly, breaking the conversational lull. Eyes fell on him. "Wirt made the screams stop. I just realized Wendy asked and nobody told you, but I think you should know."

Wendy licked her lips, casting briefly toward Mabel for guidance. "Your – brother?"

"Yeah." He smiled, rather sadly. "The voices wanted me to be a tree, but Wirt did it so I didn't have to." With a musing air, he took a small bite of roasted squash. "He's my really good brother."

"I don't totally understand what you're talking about, but – hey." Wendy put out her fist, and Greg blinked at it just once before seeming to remember what to do with the gesture, and bumped her knuckles with his own. "Your brother sounds like he was a real cool dude, little buddy. I wish I'd gotten to meet him."

"Nah." Beatrice spoke before she could stop herself; it was exhausting to feel as miserable as she had all day, and her impulse control was shot. "He was a huge nerd." Sara smirked into her hand. "Scared of basically everything, more nose than sense…" Wendy tried to read the room; Greg was grinning, so she let herself smile too. "He wrote poetry under his breath all the time and I never heard a single good line of it."

"He thought he had a really sophisticated palate," Sara murmured, "but he didn't. Over-seasoned his food every time. I never knew how to tell him."

"And stinky feet!" Greg piped up, pointing at his shoes and giggling.

"Terrible stutter," Beatrice continued. "Needed a haircut. And the _cape –_ why do we even miss this guy?" She gave Greg a tired smile; he kept laughing, and then something shifted lightly in the trees above. A soft pinecone fell and bounced squarely off of the crown of her head. She yelped in surprise and Mabel bowed with shaking mirth. Beatrice could admit when something was funny even at her expense, and she tried to chuckle with the others, but above that she was struck by a very strange feeling. When attention finally turned away from her and back to dinner, she gave the treetops leery regard.

They all fell asleep slowly, one after the other, with Wendy steadfast and alert at the fireside. Beatrice's sleep was poor, with many brief but full moments of sudden and startling wakefulness in the firelight before she drifted off again. Thunder sometimes startled her. Occasional murmuring voices invaded her dreams, the sound of the changing watch. After what felt like a very long time spent restlessly in the dark, someone shook her arm.

"Couple hours till sunrise." It was Sara, whispering hoarsely. She sounded exhausted. "Or I think so. I don't know what time it is."

Beatrice pushed herself up on her arms. She had gum in her eyes, and as she sat against a tree she picked it out crudely. She wrapped herself in her arms in anticipation of waking cold, but the air was weirdly temperate for the middle of the night in autumn. Sara laid down on her back next to the fire, which was low but still burning. She crossed one leg over the other and closed her eyes, but her anxiously jiggling foot showed she was awake.

Beatrice waited for a few minutes to see if Sara would drop off. "See anything?" she murmured.

"Nope." Sara didn't open her eyes.

"I guess that's good." Beatrice wondered if she could smell the scent of dawn gathering in the air, or if it was just her imagination. "Listen. Are you okay?" Sara stopped moving her foot. "I wanted to ask earlier," Beatrice continued, whispering into her palm. "I should have. I don't know. I didn't want anybody to hear, I guess." What a shitty thing to admit. "Just like how I should have said something to Mabel too, because I can't really imagine how she must feel after what happened to Dipper, but I didn't know where to find the words…" She was getting off-topic. "I just thought I should let you know that I noticed. You don't seem very okay."

There was nothing for a moment. A mourning dove _whoo_ ed a couple of times in the distance and confirmed Sara's instinct; sunrise wasn't far off. "I pulled my dad's gun out twice," Sara finally whispered back. "Twice just yesterday, since Wirt –" She laid an arm across her eyes. "Dad always said you don't point a gun at someone unless you're willing to use it. And I was. Two times, at two people I… At two of my friends." The fire snapped, and Beatrice pulled her knees up to her chest. "With all the shit that's happened, that's the thing I can't get out of my head. All of it is terrible, but I'm so selfish that – it's not really about what happened to them, but what _I_ might have had to do. That's what sticks."

Beatrice didn't say anything. She'd been in control of the pistol briefly during the scuffle in the morning, but that hadn't felt like the promise that Sara was making it out to be. It was just a threat, and not one she'd expected to have to act on. She might not have been able to if she'd tried; she'd never actually used a handgun before. Her marksmanship had always been done with her father's rifle.

"I can't imagine," she said after a moment. Sara stayed motionless. "I can't. You have so much conviction and I can't actually imagine what that's like."

"I don't feel like I have conviction now," Sara whispered. "I can't stop thinking about what would have happened if I'd –" She swallowed the thought and left it unfinished. Thin, unthreatening clouds passed between the treetop openings above, and the stars faded in and out behind them. Beatrice thought Sara was finally going to sleep, but momentarily she added, "Bea?"

"Hm?"

"Do you think he's okay?"

There were two possible _he's_ , but Beatrice felt pretty certain who she meant. She shrugged once and then remembered Sara's eyes weren't open. "I don't know," she said hoarsely. "I want to say yes, but… it's just a want. I don't know if I believe it." She paused. "I guess I don't."

"He told me, a few times." Sara's voice was low and hoarse. "About the Beast you both saw, way back then. That it was this big black thing with antlers and bright eyes." Another moment of silence. "I guess I thought you might know more than me."

Beatrice chewed the tip of her dirty fingernail. "I don't think I know anything."

"Okay." The fire popped again and the trees hushed. "Thanks for being honest." Beatrice couldn't bring herself to answer, and neither of them spoke again.

The quiet of the forest was imposing. Few birds sang, and the morning air was disconcertingly neutral, neither warm nor cold but perfectly skin-temperate. It gave an isolating feeling, as if the whole world was contained in a box, and she in its center. The sky lightened from indigo to the dark of a pigeon's breast, the dark of the smoke rising from the fire.

Quietly, Beatrice stood. Dawn was coming, and she couldn't fathom anything bursting out from behind a tree to attack them at this point. She strolled stiffly away from the camp to the edge of the hill not far from where they were situated. It was west-facing and still dark, but the first details of the landscape below were starting to manifest from out of the gloom. She sat down on a stump and stared out unblinking into the atmosphere. She had the vague desire to search for something there, but the world had nothing to offer but silence, and darkness, and empty insensate air.

 _"There_ you are."

The perception of void was so encompassing that Beatrice jumped to her feet at the voice that sounded by her right elbow, and stumbled a dangerous few feet down the slope before regaining her balance. She turned furiously to who else but the white crow, which sat fluttering its wings on a fallen tree that hung out over the hill's slope. _"Cripes!"_ she hissed. "You scared the shit out of me!"

"You'll recover," it responded, and Beatrice was struck by the unfamiliarity of its tone. There was none of the usual contemptuous tease; it sounded clipped and harassed. "I don't have much time, so I'm only going to say this once. You and yours have a lot of distance to cover today if you want to make it to the end in time, so I suggest you all get going as soon as possible. The caretaker is watching to make sure you don't run into trouble that can be avoided. Take advantage of that. Understand? Good." It opened its wings in exeunt, before Beatrice grabbed one of its legs.

"Wait, what the hell?" The bird squawked and flapped. "Shut up! No, you don't get to drop that and then _leave._ What are you talking about?"

"I have places – to – be!" It kicked frantically.

 _"Explain!"_

The crow threw its beak to the side in disgust and flattened its wings to their widest to show defeat, but still complained, "I cannot possibly express how much of a waste of my time this is." She tightened her grip around its skinny leg. _"Alright._ Bill is making disturbingly fast progress toward the old man's house and you need to catch up with him or he will _win,_ plain and simple, where winning means the end of the world as we all know it. This is why your haste is imperative. There, I just repeated what I said the first time but with more words. Are you happy?"

"Of course I'm not happy!" The valley floor far below them swam in gray mist. "I haven't seen you since you blitzed in yesterday morning to warn me about Dip– about Bill, and then left again without explaining anything."

"Your gratitude is noted, as usual," the crow snipped.

"It's not okay!" She drew in toward the bird, knowing well that she was putting her face dangerously within beak's-reach. "You keep throwing out just enough clues to keep me about a minute ahead of the game and that isn't okay anymore. How long did you know about Bill?" The crow gave her a scalding look. "How long?! How much warning could you have given us instead of waiting until he tried to _kill –"_

"You are a _child,"_ the bird spat, and with a sharp tug it pulled its leg out of her grip, but it didn't fly away. She sat up, startled. "You are a child and you have been a child for longer than you know and children cannot be trusted to handle information with discretion." Beatrice's face burned. "If I had told you from the very beginning what could happen to Pine Tree, that information would have splintered your little group and eliminated almost any chance of success. If I told you after you all finally decided you could stand each other's _guts!_ , you would have devised some disgustingly clever little plan to control that time bomb and then seen it blow up in your faces when Bill decided he had nothing left to lose and emerged as soon as he was capable, which was _days_ ago now. _Children cannot foresee the consequences of their actions."_ Incensed, it marched up and down the tree trunk before her. "Everything I do! Everything I do to clean up this awful mess, and who listens? No one! Not you, not that damned wolf, certainly not Bill –" It hopped up and down in anger.

Beatrice sat back. It stung to realize that she had no strong defense against its rationale; she wanted to fight, but nothing came to mind beyond a vague and puerile _nuh-uh_. She ran her hands up and down her arms, all her skin the same calm temperature to the touch. "Fine," she choked, "fine. So how is he?" The crow paused its march. "Is Dipper… is he okay? At least tell me that." Mabel deserved to know.

"Are you talking about Pine Tree, or Bill Cipher?" the bird asked flatly, and then didn't let her respond before continuing, "because _Bill_ is having the time of his life on what he thinks is his own little victory march. Conversely, Pine Tree's experience is likely closer to that of a _living hell_ as humans conceive it _,_ I'm afraid." Beatrice looked up. "I can't lie and tell you that that psychoneurotic little polygon is very kind to the bodies he inhabits. Well – I could lie about that, but I don't want to. Honestly, I'd say there's a good twenty percent chance he ends up accidentally killing the both of them before they even make it to the town, and that might be the best outcome we can hope for." Beatrice's stomach shifted queasily. "Not what you wanted to hear, I imagine."

She shrugged down into the comfort of her own shoulders. Pale yellow touched the sky behind them, and trees below were starting to turn recognizably green. The clouds in the far west were still clustered near the ridge, heavy with rain. "And what about Wirt?" she whispered. The crow cocked its head at her and blinked. "Wirt. My friend, Wirt. Are you serious?" She sat forward. "Do you even know our names?He turned into a _monster_ last night –"

"Oh! Woodwind!" The crow nodded, a jerky little bird nod. "Yes, of course. You'll forgive me, I'm more about titles. _He's_ fine."

Warmth came in to flood over the cold water which had pooled in her stomach when she heard of Dipper's fate. "He is?" she asked, and barely bothered to mask her happiness.

"Of course. I'm actually surprised you hadn't noticed." It registered her incomprehension. "He's been following you closely since yesterday afternoon, at least. Humans are quite dense creatures, aren't they?"

Her heart hesitated to beat for a second when she heard the crow speak, and then rolled out its heavy thump with the weight of a boot on a missed stair. "What do you mean?" she uttered.

"I mean that they habitually seem unable to perceive things even a few degrees beyond –"

Her fist clenched so hard her nails dug into her palms. "What do you mean that he's been following us?" She already knew it was probably an artifact of the crow's usual double-talk and she would be imminently disappointed with its explanation, but she still had the urge to run back to the campsite and scream his name, damned if everyone woke. "I didn't – Greg said he wanted look for him but none of us even knew where to start –"

"He's been with you as much as he's been anywhere. 'Space' is a much less limiting thing upon abandoning a physical form and I do _so_ envy him for it." The crow's expression was pitying. "I need to make it clear that the creature I'm talking about is not necessarily the one you remember. I suspect you hope to stumble across him sleeping in a little bed of ferns so that you might bring him back into your fold, but the situation is far more complicated than that. He made a deal, you see. You knew a boy, but the thing out in the woods now is a beast." She tore small pieces of dead skin from her lips with her teeth, and tasted blood. "I managed to reach him early and plant a seed to our benefit – he's on our side for now, and he will do what he can to ensure that you are able to catch up to Cipher, but dealing in death and shadows is not a kind thing to the human mind, as I understand it. It's not for no reason that the last warden of this world turned into a villain before the end." It spread its wings accedingly. "Though who knows. People are really such unpredictable little things."

Beatrice sat frozen. A light breeze stirred her hair, the first wind she'd felt all night. The crow raised its head: "He's woken, then." She looked at it sharply and it returned the gesture. "Are you quite satisfied then, Bluebird? Have I given you enough of my extremely limited and very valuable time?" She felt flushed. "There. I have no more conscious secrets; you are enlightened as I am. I don't care how you treat the information anymore, but I say again, _do everything you can to catch up with Cipher._ It is positively exigent."

She had a last question, and it came out on a whisper like a sailing leaf. "Can we save them?"

The crow blinked sideways at her. She could see well enough by now to tell how it was blinking. "You mean the wayward members of your band? If he could control the demon in his head, Pine Tree could be saved, yes. Assuming he hasn't lost too much blood beforehand."

Her mouth was dry. "And Wirt?"

"That one is more capable of defending himself than any of the rest of us. Hardly in need of saving."

"But I mean – can we _save_ him." She crossed her hands over her chest. "Bring him back to… to Greg. So he could go home."

The crow stared at her. Its expression was indecipherable for the few seconds that it declined to talk. "Even if you managed to save the world," it finally said, "neither of us would have the power to do that." Beatrice's breath hissed quickly out her nose and she leaned forward with her hands clapped over her mouth. Her view of her feet turned watery and she missed the flutter of wings at her side as she struggled to control her breathing. When she felt under control enough to look up, she was alone again.

She wandered slowly back to the camp, only thirty or forty feet away, as the first light touched the treetops. Everyone else slept peacefully in the deep shadow beneath the trees. Sara was still on her back with an arm flung over her face, and Greg had his head in a pillowy fern. Beatrice watched over them for what felt like a long time. She felt like a shell full of water that would all splash out if she moved too quickly. She pushed the embers in the fire pit with a stick, and watched their sparks spin and crack hypnotically. Nothing stirred and no birds sang.

Did she ever, she wondered, come away from her conversations with the crow happier for it? The knowledge she'd begged for sat like a pit in her gut, and there it would have to stay. Even if they won the day, they would still lose; there could be no benefit in letting anyone else know that. Her hand on the fire-stick shook. She promised would not cry.

She nudged Sara's foot with her own.

"Hey." At her summons, the other girl's eye peeked through the gloomy blue. Beatrice couldn't quite manage to look at her. "Listen. Um. I think we need to go."

Sara started to sit up. "Wassapnin?"

"I think heard a wolf howl." Beatrice wrapped her hands up together to keep them steady. "Not too far away." The weak excuse for their pre-dawn wakeup stood only on a foundation of her friends' trust in her. Fear wafted up from her stomach and became the nausea at the back of her throat. Sara nodded vaguely, and slapped Mabel's ankle to wake her in turn as she stood, hunched and gray-faced.

They buried the fire and left under the greenish light of earliest sunrise, yawning and stumbling down the trail cast in darkness by the peak of the hill they traversed the side of. The morning air was summer-pure, calm and clear and comfortable. It blew in warm through the valley to push at their backs, and the sky turned from gray to cloudless, powder-blue. Greg was so tired he seemed hardly able to walk, and after some silent pressure from the others Robbie offered to carry him on his back for a while. Beatrice, today, forced herself to the front past anyone else, marshaling the group with force that felt like a sendup of the sort of real leadership Sara or Wendy or Dipper had always shown. They couldn't stop to eat because there was a wolf in the area, she insisted, so just grab an apple out of the bag and keep walking; and even if there wasn't a wolf, they had a lot of catching up to do anyway, so they should really be making tracks no matter what.

Her position at the head of the procession had other advantages. She didn't have to talk to anyone if they couldn't keep up with her; and if she wasn't talking to anyone, she had the time and the focus to think, and to watch. The crow had left the seed of an idea in her head. Without it, she might not have noticed the things she did, but with it, it was hard to see anything else.

 _The implication of a world which bends itself to our whims is either the most comforting or most terrifying thing imaginable._

Their second day in disjunctive formation, as the broken and makeshift B-list version of the group they should have rightly been, proceeded in similar form to the first, but Beatrice felt very differently about those proceedings for reasons she couldn't quite articulate. The sunlight that crested the eastern hillside was kind and clear, and the air moved gently, constantly, always a few degrees cooler than the skin to whisk sweat neatly away. Shrub-flowers bloomed despite the lateness of the season, and broadleaf trees had green buds on their leaves. Even the gradient of the hill beneath their feet felt less strenuous. Overnight, the whole world seemed to have invested itself in not allowing them a single hardship. Beatrice looked over her shoulder compulsively in search of something that she expected to be watching them through the trees. This was either the most unseasonably beautiful day in the world's history, or something deeper was at work; the day grew round above them and she grew edgier by adversity's repeated failure to manifest.

 _He's been following you,_ the crow had said.

Stupid, stupid Wirt. She'd sworn she wasn't going to cry.

It became apparent after a while that they were finally on the downward slope through the hills. The ground was slick with dead leaves and the incline was, in some places, bordering on treacherous, but the path seemed tailored to their needs. Young trees stood in rows, their trunks a perfect circumference for grabbing in order to avoid a fall. Patches of rough lichen grew in the pits in the trail to soak up excess rain. In the middle of the afternoon, they found their trail down from the hill to end in a steep and wet hundred-foot clay face which would in any other circumstances have required hours of walking to avoid, but by fortune the few trees growing on the dropoff had their bare roots exposed in a manner that resembled a natural staircase to the bottom. They took their time descending one-by-one, and barely even muddied themselves in the process. Beatrice was the last down, and she could hardly feel it when her feet touched flat earth again.

Her hands were starting to shake. She hadn't actually eaten anything yet today and her stomach ached. She felt like she was going mad; she struggled to focus her eyes and her heart beat quicker than suited her pace. _Where are you, Wirt?_ She wanted to scream it where everyone could hear, so that he would have no excuse to hide anymore. He had to be here. How did no one else see? All this luck was not anything as high-minded as providence. It was just a long series of considerations and kindnesses, tiny favors handed out in ways that only a loving friend would think of.

 _You're here,_ she thought over and over to herself, opening and closing her hands, staring at her feet. _It's you and you're here and you don't want anyone to know. But I know. I know._ It was advantageous to be at the front of the group again. She wiped her eyes without anyone seeing.

Now free of the hills, the sunlight was bright on the ground and the forest glittered and swayed. Dark storm clouds loomed ahead, but no matter how long they walked, the weather stayed at a distance, as if keeping pace with them. The lemonade light turned to strawberry wine. On the rare occasion that Beatrice looked back at the others, they seemed relatively at ease. Mabel walked with her pensive eyes toward the treetops, and Greg had made an idle game of gathering colorful leaves. A perfect day was still worth something to them.

How many miles they covered between dawn and dusk, it was hard to say. Twelve, or fifteen; they wore winged shoes, or maybe the ground was pushing backward under their feet like a belt as they walked. They finally set up their second night's camp on a flat between towering redwoods, where the trees were widely-spaced and the light of sunset touched down rich and warm, turned rosy by the ever-rolling clouds in the west. While Wendy cursed over trying to light a fire with evergreen twigs, Sara observed the storm on the ridge without comment. She must have known something, Beatrice reasoned while stealthily watching the other girl. Sara was smart, certainly smarter than her. If anyone else was going to figure it out, she would. Beatrice would not lie if she asked her the question directly.

Sara never did, though. She sat down to eat with everyone else, and when her yam was cooked, asked Beatrice if she wanted some. It was more out of sense than desire that Beatrice said yes, and she only choked down a few bites with water before giving up and handing the rest off to Robbie. The emptiness inside her was at equilibrium. She didn't feel hungry anymore.

After dinner, Robbie lounged by the fire while Sara helped Greg file through his collection of leaves, and the rest of them watched the sunset through the black columns of the forest. The bear-snout cliffs where Mabel said Gravity Falls lay were engulfed by rainclouds, and the low sun lay behind the sheets of downpour that fell distantly between them and turned the storm the color of a blackberry stain. "We're so close," Wendy muttered. "Might actually make it by tomorrow night. Goddamn. I kind of never thought we'd actually do it." She breathed deeply in and then out through a tight hole in her lips. "Wish we could celebrate. I want to smoke a bowl."

"Yes, please," Mabel murmured.

"I'm with you there," Beatrice agreed, even though she didn't know what that meant, because she was trying not to end the day as standoffish as she'd begun it.

"I started out, you know, back when this first happened, I started out thinking I was going to Gravity Falls to rescue my family, right?" Wendy ran a finger in circles over her exposed kneecap. "I guess I figured out a long time ago now that they weren't going to be there when I showed. I kept going because, hell, I know my apartment doesn't exist anymore and Gravity Falls is… home. But now…" She shrugged.

"Gotta save the world from your dumb hometown again," Mabel said, and she and Wendy exchanged significant looks. Beatrice felt left out.

"You holding up?" Wendy asked Mabel, who looked down at her lap. "I mean, you're a total trooper – you're seriously, like, my hero, Mabes – but really. What happened to Dipper. With it all happening again…"

Mabel whispered, "Yeah."

"I just want to be sure you're doing okay."

"I know." Mabel tucked her hair behind her ear and laid down backward, propped up on her elbows. "It feels so much like last time, doesn't it? Like we're going through all the same motions." Beatrice, who sat curled on Wendy's other side, pressed her chin into her knees and tried to pretend she wasn't privy to an intimate moment between old friends. "And… and last time didn't have a very happy ending, huh?" She licked her lips and took a shaky breath. Wendy put a sympathetic hand on her shoulder. Mabel's near-tearfulness was disturbing. Beatrice had once thought her the sort of person who couldn't be kept down long; now she struggled to remember the last time she'd heard her laugh in earnest.

Wendy hugged Mabel, a long one-armed lean-in that pressed their temples together. "He's gonna be okay, Mabes," Wendy muttered. "We all are. We're even more kickass now than when we were back then." Mabel spluttered, and Beatrice stood without saying anything and elected to join Sara and Greg in organizing leaves.

When the stars began to fade in through the purpling atmosphere, Beatrice asked, "Can I do the first watch tonight?" of Wendy, who gave a languid, no-cares shrug that morphed into a nod. Beatrice perched on a root away from the fire and watched the horizon turn from the color of a fresh bruise to that of an old one, and then to darkness. The air was still perfectly temperate, but she fought waves of prickling goosebumps. She was simultaneously anxious for the others to sleep, and surprisingly clear-minded. Time dilated and turned thin; she would be alone soon enough.

Greg came to sit with her briefly with an offer of the last candy bar they still had: "I don't think they have candy where you live, so you've had less candy than anyone else overall, so you should get it," he said, and put the cookie bar in her hand. She smiled as genuinely as she could.

"Thanks, Greg," she responded, and blurted that _Wirt is okay_ only in her head, because there could be nothing crueler than giving him that sort of hope without absolute evidence that it was true. She put the candy in her pocket.

Her preoccupation turned to a meditative trance, spent staring at the wilderness outside the firelight with only intermittent awareness of the movements of others, until the wood in the fire snapped loudly once and she was shocked out of her stupor to the realization that no one was talking anymore. Gentle snoring buzzed close to the ground. Immediately her heart began to pound. The shaking in her limbs returned. She waited. And waited. She wasn't sure _what_ she was waiting for, but she knew she would recognize it when it happened. She was certain that they had nothing to fear from the wilds anymore, so the focus of her watch was not on threats, but on signs. For… something. Anything.

Thunder rolled in the far distance. Her stomach was starting to hurt again. Adrenaline could only keep her sharp for so long; she slumped slowly back against a cedar, and went without blinking so that her vision turned blotchy and dark. Sometimes she started violently, and realized that she'd been drifting off. The sound of breathing and burning was ambient. The air did not cool in the night. She was warm and the woods were so quiet.

The next time she woke, it was as a wolf's tail brushed gently against her leg while it passed by.

Beatrice opened her eyes and thought that she was dreaming. The animal was as quiet as a ghost as it slipped in a close semi-circle around the fire, gaze shifting from one sleeping form to the next. It passed its nose across each of their bodies and then paused behind Greg, who lay cuddling his frog like a teddy bear. The wolf did not move for what felt like a very long time, and neither did Beatrice. Her inner child, instinctually wowed by close contact with all creatures of the wild, thought it almost a majestic sight. She should do something. What should she do? The wolf lowered its nose to sniff at Greg's ear, only a whisper from his exposed neck. Beatrice's heart seared, and the bubble of unreality burst.

She jumped to her feet. She intended to shout, but nothing came out save a hard breath between her teeth. The wolf froze with its eyes on her, and she did the same. One second passed between them, and then two. The firelight glinted in the animal's yellow eyes. It turned and fled with a leap into the dark, and Beatrice let go of a pained lungful of air she'd been holding without intention. Twigs crunched under the predator's retreating paws as she followed its invisible path outward with her eyes.

Now Beatrice was shaking yet again, violently enough that her teeth chattered and her fingernails made crescents in her palms. Someone could have gotten hurt. She was so _stupid,_ so arrogant to assume she knew they were in no danger when more than a week's history should have said otherwise. No one was going to keep them but themselves.

Right?

The fire snapped again. Robbie murmured and rolled over and then went still. Beatrice's eyes continued to search the place between the trees where the wolf had vanished. The warm wind, a summer night's breeze in November, blew calmingly.

Intoxicating certainty flushed her circulatory system, and before she could engage the portion of her brain not led by instinct, she dashed into the woods herself, and left the fire behind.

It had been no more than ten seconds since the wolf's exit; how far could a dog go in that amount of time? She jogged blindly forward. The redwoods left a pattern of heavy black shadow on the forest floor, and in between them a lattice of shining silver moonlight. _"Wirt,"_ she panted, not too loudly, because she was still close enough to wake the others if she yelled. She stopped and spun on her heels. "Wirt!"

Yellow eyes stared at her from next to a young cedar. Her heart leapt. "Do you know where he is?" she whispered, but the wolf turned and ran again. She followed without fear of becoming lost, or the massive darkness of the woods around. Nothing mattered more than finding the truth tonight, and damn tomorrow when it came. Her breath cut her throat: "Wirt!" She could be louder now, she decided. "Wirt!" The wind began to blow again, straight on her face but still gentle, as if ushering her back the way she came. She ignored it; "I know you're here! Come out!" The moonlight flashed in her vision as she passed in and out of its fall against the ground.

If the area had been more heavily wooded, the wolf would have easily eluded her, but the underbrush was sparse between the wide-spaced trees, and she kept her view on it at a distance until it disappeared into a deep shadow behind a thicket of small, dense pines. Beatrice forged onward, heedless of the blinding dark, and then let out a small scream as something shocked her feet. She had stumbled into running water, too black to see. As she stopped in the shallows to pant and sweat and curse her own stupidity, she spied the wolf's form above her. It was several yards away atop a massive fallen log which spanned the creek to its opposite, invisible bank.

She allowed herself a few more deep breaths before shouting over, "Are you here to help me or not?" The wolf did not answer, but passed into shadow again on its way across the water. She swallowed the spit that had gathered in her mouth, and took another step to cross the brook in pursuit.

Her foot found a stone, and then slipped sharply off, and quite suddenly her ears were full of water.

She hadn't even the time to scream; the creek was deep and strong, and she plunged straight down and away. Her nose flooded immediately all the way to the back of her throat, burning and hateful, so she had no air with which to cough it away. With eyes open, she saw flashes of light refracted from above, but she couldn't be sure which direction up was. All else was black. Rocks barked her legs and kicking accomplished nothing. The current was crushing. She could not find the surface with arms extended. She convulsed, and the painful cough she'd been fighting against came out of her heedless of the fact that she was drowning. Now there was water in her mouth, in her throat. Where was she? She couldn't feel her limbs.

She was going down, she could tell, down where the pressure was heavier and water swirled in inescapable eddies. Her back brushed against a rocky bed, and black tree roots tangled in her hair. She tried again to open her eyes, but her vision manifested only blotches of shimmering light lost to encompassing dark. She had to breathe. She wouldn't be able to avoid trying for much longer.

It occurred to her that she was going to die, and only her preoccupation with her pain and numbness and need for air kept her from comprehending it with true and profound despair. After everything she'd been through, all the things she'd seen and done, her end had come as a result of her own stupidity, and she deserved no better. She closed her eyes again to avoid confronting her fate, and her drifting hand found one of the roots at the bottom of the river and wrapped around it, for something like comfort.

The root wrapped back.

She felt the movement as her cognition began to go black. Invisible tendrils twisted together and pressed against her shoulders in a netted foundation, and Beatrice felt the kickback as she was lifted from the riverbed. Her hair streamed backward and water flowed through her fingers, and the glimmering light grew brighter, but not quickly enough. She felt like her ribcage was collapsing on itself. There was no more time. She opened her mouth and gasped. Whatever came after that, she didn't feel it.

She woke up for a split second when she breached the surface. She tried to breathe, but of course she couldn't, because she had water inside her windpipe. She tumbled back into the dark. At next awareness, she was retching, coughing up knives and nails in the shallow water on the bank. She fell forward. Bright lights like eyes shone into hers.

Unconsciousness came again, and it lasted much longer this time.

When she finally woke, it took her a long time to realize that she had done so. Her head was scrambled and fogged. She thought for a moment that she was at home, in bed all by herself without her sisters to crowd her off the mattress, and it took her a few minutes to remember why she knew that couldn't be right, and longer still for recollection to return to her in batches. Memories fell down into her head one by one and splashed into the water on her brain, each one unpleasant and cold: wolves and campfires and two different pairs of eyes turning from friends' to strangers'. When she opened her own eyes, they focused blearily through the dark on a small patch of mushrooms on the ground in front of her. Vision was followed by feeling, and with feeling she both wondered at how she wasn't dead yet and self-pityingly regretted it. Her arms shook like jelly as she attempted to rise, and every breath felt as though it were forcing its way past a jacks-ball lodged in her windpipe. It hurt badly. She pushed herself to a sitting position in the soft bed of ferns and clover where she lay, and a crude blanket of woven grass fell from her shoulders. She was still damp, but significantly less than should be a person who had just climbed out of a river. She did not know how long she had been unconscious.

Beatrice stared at her bare, scratched knees and tried to remember. She couldn't have gotten here on her own.

The static sound of rushing, churning water momentarily came to her attention, and she turned to her right to see a wide white-water river passing by only a few yards away. She was situated very close to the edge of a hillside, and the river poured from its sharp face at a smooth outward angle. Moonlight illuminated an avenue between the trees and she followed it to the edge. The water fell fifty feet into a lake, and the lake fed another river, and that river ran between two bear-snout bluffs, only a few miles out beneath the cloud-patched sky. Her jaw dropped. How could she have been pulled so far downstream? At this distance, she could see the low, scattered masses of the buildings that composed the small town, even the train tracks that ran between the cliffs, like Wendy and Mabel had mentioned. She had made it. How had she made it?

She took a slow step backward. Something crunched beneath her foot, and a blackberry thorn scratched her ankle above her shoes. Her heart stopped.

The creature from the briarpatch had come, and it was staring at her.

Beatrice's mouth fell open gracelessly as she turned. It was only a few feet away, almost within arm's reach, and much larger than she remembered, towering in the shadows like a small tree. Its eyes shone blue, and antlers curled forward around its head, resplendent with small leaves and bloom. It leaned in expectantly, its gaze locked on hers. She waited, and when no movement manifested between them, finally released a breath that she hadn't realized she was holding. It rose up in response, staglike. Its movements creaked and rubbed.

Warm wind as flush as a hot July night pushed between the riparian trees, and Beatrice shuddered in relief when it touched her still-clammy skin. Her eyes watered, but she kept her swimming gaze on the black thing and gambled on a step forward. She tried to choke aloud, _"What are you?"_ but the word cut her drowned throat on the first vowel and made her cough violently. The creature recoiled as she doubled over. "No," she gasped, tripping forward wrapped up in her arms. "N-no, don't –" It retreated again, shirking like a wild animal. "D-don't leave." It froze, staring. Her tears were hot on her cold face.

The creature didn't move this time when Beatrice stepped toward it, but it gave off every sign of alarm. Its posture was hunched down from full height to almost matching her own, and its eyes were as clear and bright as the moon on a winter evening. She shuffled forward again weakly and put out a hand. She half expected it to be bitten off, but the monster still did nothing.

"You s-saved me," she managed to croak. "You saved me, didn't you? Why d-did you bring me here?" She had the idea, just for a second, that she should try to touch its face, but lifted her arm at the last moment to wrap her fingers loosely around the prong of an antler instead. It was dry and rough like bark. Her breath left her in short jolts.

The creature made no attempt to shake her off and did not break eye contact. "Is it you?" she asked thickly. The shadow blinked. "Is it really –?" A heavy shudder passed from her neck down to her feet and she had to stop. "Oh god…" She wiped beneath her eye and did her best to clear her throat so she could speak. "What happened to you?" It finally cast its eyes away from her. "I can't believe…" She took the other antler so they faced each other squarely, noses inches apart. There was nothing to its face but darkness, and those bright blue eyes that had risen from the berry patch two nights before. She wouldn't be afraid; she did not want to be crying when she looked at him. "I'm so sorry, Wirt."

It – he – opened his dark mouth to say nothing, and the valley wind tousled her hair.

She waited for it to stop. She didn't let go and didn't look away, and when the wind died down she still stood resolute, holding on with both hands. She waited for understanding to come to her. "Are – are you okay?" she gasped.

The creature raised a pitch-black hand. For an irrational instant she expected to be struck, but he only lifted it to the height of his throat, and pulled it away in a falling motion. He did it again, and she tried to understand. "You can't… can you talk?" He shook his head, and the movement pulled her arms to and fro. "Oh, Wirt…"

The unfamiliar monster's eyes were so recognizably wistful. He tilted his head at her and she tried to think of what she could possibly say. The inside of her head was a mess, and she was torn between her instinctual fear of things large and faceless and dark, and hard-won surety that he would not harm her. "It's going to be okay," she whispered, more for herself than for him, and ran her grip lightly down the wooden antler. In a convincing likeness of composure, she raised and squared her chin: "It's alright, now. I-I'm going to bring you back."

He did not respond. "Greg will be so happy to know you're okay," she continued. "He's been so sad without you, he won't admit that, but... A-and Sara and Mabel and – we met some of Mabel's old friends and they never even got to meet you. Now you can. And Dipper – oh, God." She tried to control her reaction without taking her hands back. "You still don't know about Dipper…" Not for long, though. She had found him, hiding here under this shadow. He was here, and she could bring him home.

But the creature gave no reaction. He stayed hunched forward with her, eyes still and sad, antlers in reach. At each of her statements, he only blinked. The edges of irascibility, buried since his tragedy, rasped Beatrice's mind: "Do you understand me?" Very slightly, he nodded. "Then – then you have to respond, somehow, or I'm stuck feeling like a crazy person, talking to myself –" She paused for composure's sake.

The black thing just stared. Beatrice breathed patience back into her soul and tried again: "If you're afraid because you look… different, don't be," she reassured him, because it seemed the most sensible argument to pre-empt. "You know none of us would…" He was back to shaking his head. "What?" In a comforting gesture, she reached to brush his face as she hadn't dared before.

The feel of his skin within the shadow was rough and hard, and he drew away sharply at her touch. She jumped backward too, and they both froze a few feet from one another, wide-eyed and wary. Goosebumps moved in a wave down Beatrice's legs, and she swallowed and was about to speak again when a long, high lupine howl went up over the trees. She and the creature both turned toward the distant noise, and when it faded, she looked back at him with greater determination.

"You have to come back," she said once more. He didn't shake his head this time, but gestured limply, defeatedly at his throat. She met his eyes again; it was a dizzying task, trying to find something there that still reminded her of the boy she'd used to know. Trancelike, she stepped close and reached out to take his indicating hand. It was as cold and dry as seasoned winter wood. The intensity of her breath was carefully controlled. She tried so hard to see him in the dark. It was the only thing she could think, and she repeated it further: "You have to come back." Again, she dared touched his face; she ran her fingers outward along his cheek and down toward his jaw in a long caress. His eyes closed and he bowed in toward her.

The crow had been wrong. It just wasn't possible that there could be a monster hidden beneath this shadow and oil and bark, no matter what her eyes and ears and hands told her. She hiccoughed slightly over the lump in her throat: "Wirt…"

His antlers made a wreath around her ears. Beatrice met his forehead with her own, pressed close, heart pounding, stomach burning. With closed eyes, she tried to imagine that they were both their real selves, solid and soft and alone together in a world where everything had gone as it was supposed to. His skin under her hand would not have had splinters and cracks, and she could have brushed his hair from his face and looked into familiar brown eyes instead of blue. She drew her fingers further down with the thought that she would direct him to look up at her, but was distracted by her discovery of a hard ridge of wood that extended downward from his chin like the bottom of a mask. Her fingers curled around it to pry, but he shied away from both her and her exploration, and she dropped her arm, rejected.

"What do I need to do?" she whispered as he shifted backward. Moonlight spattered the black forest floor around them, but none touched him. His form was monolithic black. "What do you need to hear to understand that I – I _know_ you're still –" She took a deep breath, and he turned away as if shamed. "You're still _you,"_ she insisted, putting herself in front of him. "You're still you, you just seem…" She'd gone into the sentence not knowing how she was going to end it. His head was back to shaking, over and over, and now it was pissing her off. "But you _are._ God, it's so like you to buy into this, this _cursed monster_ shtick but I won't let you do that because –" His gesticulation became more frantic, more helpless. "You're not! You're not, Wirt! Why won't you _listen_ to me!" Beatrice spat out an unwanted, bitter sob and pressed her lips together to stop it from happening again. With directionless disgust, she looked away.

 _"No."_ The word hit her ear like the snap of a broken branch, like a cough, barely-controlled and painful. She turned back to him, aghast. He was hunched forward as ever, fists in the air before him in a gesture of helplessness. _"No,"_ he said again, in a voice not his own, not even recognizably human, but something more like the echo of lashing trees in a storm. Beatrice flushed as she pushed in toward him.

"Wirt?" she asked, and grabbed both of his hands in hers without thinking. "Wirt, can you talk?"

He seemed to struggle. _"N-no."_ He didn't sound certain at all.

"Yes you can." Her eyes were swimming in tears yet again. "Y-yes you can! You _can_ talk, because you're still you and you can come home and it will – it'll be like nothing ever changed –" A heavy tear fell down her face. His blue eyes were mournful.

 _"No,"_ he said.

Beatrice stepped backward, and sat down hard.

Could this really be what it came down to – self-pity so complete that it would not allow a man to save himself in the face of certain doom? She should have stormed away, cursing his name aloud and making it clear she'd speak to him again when he pulled his head out of his ass, but she hadn't the energy. She should have been angry, but she was just so, crushingly sad. Beatrice stared numbly at her knees with the expectation that something inspiring was due to happen, but the world was still and silent to her ears. There was only rushing water and leaves' susurrus. Her sinuses stung. She bit her lips together to keep her grief inside, and it manifested through her shuddering shoulders instead. She just didn't know what to do.

A shadow moved to block the moonlight that fell across her body. She didn't react when velveted leaves brushed her cheeks. The black creature drew in close and lowered himself to the ground next to her; with a swift peek beneath her lashes she saw the glint of his eyes through her tears. She hid her face from him in a fit of pique, but he didn't leave. Soft ebon vines passed along the back of her neck and a wooden torso like the trunk of a tree grew in solid at her side, so that she could lean in if she wished. Such a familiar, considerate gesture. She pinched the bridge of her nose to control its ugly drip.

His hand touched her cheek, as hard and dark as ever. That finally got her to lift her face into the shadow that came with him. Splintering fingers rasped across her jaw toward her ear, fingers longer and more narrow than any human's could be. Not the hand she'd come to know, not the hand that had held hers when she needed comfort, or carried her when she was small and cursed. She coughed messily and reached to press his harsh touch deeper against her skin, cradling him as he cradled her. The ferns and wild grasses were soft, but blackberry thorns grew a thick ring around them, as dark in the night as he was. She made a sound of weak protest and finally gave in, curling forward, inward, her desire for respite greater than her anger. She was so tired, and the crooks of him seemed made for her. If she turned into a tree, she would never have to do anything but sleep ever again. His were gentle vines.

Stillness came in over her slowly, reclined in a creeping blackwood bed. She didn't resist the fall into the darkness, and for a while her rest was warm and kind. Then she felt a tug on her mind, a prod that begged her attention. She ignored it at first in favor of sleep, but it was persistent. With curiosity begrudgingly cast to it, she found her eyes opening, but not to the view of a tree's embrace that she'd closed them to. She could not feel the weight of her body, and she looked out over a small, unremarkable puddle of mud in a ditch.

For a moment, Beatrice was perplexed. Where was she, and how had she gotten here? Then she had the strangest experience of her life as another pair of eyes, which she had never known to possess before, opened as well; and now she saw the starry sky half-obscured through thick tree boughs, and the puddle in the anonymous ground still in another place, far away, distance she could conceive like the space between her two hands. Yet another vision came to her, and she had a view down a dark and desolate main street beneath two cliffs like bears' snouts. She could not close her eyes, and as she began to panic, her view became greater, one viewpoint after another in uncontrollable succession, repeating patterns of leaves and trunks and thin grasses. She'd never felt the scope of the world in such a way before. It was terrifying.

But she wasn't alone. A familiar presence pressed itself against a shoulder that she did not seem to actually possess anymore, and she scrabbled for it, begging for reassurance or escape. It was firm against her, and when she finally calmed, it began to guide her like a ghost through the woods. They gained gradual speed together along the black web of shadows between the moonfall on the forest floor, moving with the sweeping grace of flight as she still remembered it from long ago. She did not have to raise her head to watch the stars winking past in the sky; she only had to think that she desired to see it, and she did, all of it, a view of the glittering atmosphere from the vantage of millions of leaves emergent from the canopy. An imaginary hand took her nonexistent one, and she watched the forest slip by as they passed through its arteries.

On a flat plane between redwoods, she felt the pull to stop. There was a small light ahead between the massive trees, and she pushed herself up to the edges of it with wide-eyed curiosity. Five forms huddled around, sleeping soundly. Beatrice was wrong-footed at first to recall how recently she had been there with them, but her memories of being a person were so difficult to properly grasp. Greg still lay on his side with his frog cuddled under his chin, and the sight flushed her with warmth. _You see?_ The question was asked of her without source or true voice, but might have belonged to the wind, or perhaps the woods themselves. She tried to ask what was meant by it, but already she was being dragged away again, riding through the trees like on the back of a great black horse. They covered miles in each leap.

The clouds overhead thickened and the view of the stars disappeared. There was no more moonlight for them to skirt, and Beatrice spread her arms to cover the breadth of the wilderness beneath the shadow. Light shone solitary in the dark here as well, but unnatural and cold, with none of a campfire's comfort – blue fire following a human form, shaking and muttering in the rain. As before, Beatrice tried to draw in closer to see, but this time felt a warning touch not to approach. It offered a sense of creeping unease. The light grew closer, and with it came a familiar voice, a well-known silhouette. Mabel's brother stood knee-deep in blackberry thorns with floating fire in his right hand, bleeding and bruised from head to toe.

She looked on in horrified fascination, and his head suddenly snapped up with a ghoulish smile directed straight at her. " _I see you, you know."_

She reeled in fear, and was pulled yet again from the scene, more hastily this time. Thunder rumbled above, and now her view was flashing in the dark. She felt raindrops hit the ground. One last time they stopped, and she felt the urgency in her companion's direction of her attention to a large, dilapidated shack in the woods, with a light burning in its attic window. She was so confused, so overwhelmed. There was a presence here that she could feel, but not comprehend – an enormous, pulsing _something_ under the earth, as foreign as a tumor. It did not belong, and it was dangerous, and she couldn't see what it was but she also couldn't think about anything else –

 _Now you see._

And a touch on her real shoulder brought her back, just like that, and she closed all other eyes again in favor of her own.

Beatrice gasped and jerked like she'd come up from underwater again, and as she sat up, thin black vines ripped from the earth and lost their curl in the places they'd started to grow around her wrists and thighs and neck. As Beatrice came back to herself, the first thing she felt was that she was crying, and maybe she'd never really stopped. The blue-streaked world distorted and then cleared again as a heavy tear dropped down her cheek; he was still there with her, so close over her shoulder and so sad and quiet. She stared a wordless question, and he blinked what felt like confirmation. She tried to scrub the tear-tracks from her face to prevent them from filling in again.

"Oh God," she hiccupped, putting trembling fingers against her lips just to feel them. She was so _solid._ Her neck was tender where the creepers had started to run parallel to her arteries, atop her skin. "You – that was _you,"_ she whispered to him. "That's what it's like? All the time?" His head lowered. "Wirt..." She cupped his face in her shaking hands and tilted it as if she could find another angle to the darkness. She'd started out with more to say, but the words left through her fingertips, drawn in small circles against the wood. Slowly, she swiveled and put her knees beneath her so she could rise up to meet his face, look him eye to tearful eye. Somewhere in the distance over the hill, clouds rolled and rumbled. Beatrice still felt the echoes of the storm in her bones, and it brought illness, and elation, and understanding that had no articulation given to it. The spreading black lingered in her soul, and she knew that she had been wrong: this wasn't boy she'd used to know. Not really.

But he didn't have to be a beast, either.

There was no congruity in the idea that someone who dwelt so deep in the dark, so far from normal human experience, could possess his kind of tenderness and want. Her hands traced the invisible hollows under his eyes, the magnificent branching crown above. His long hand lay in the small of her back. She hadn't noticed it before, and fought the shiver that rolled up and down her body when she did. He pulled her in, and she let him. Brambles encroached along her calves; she bit her lip and pressed her forehead to his. Her words tacked in her dry mouth: "It's going to be okay." The fabric of her shirt caught on his rough fingers. "You're alright." Soft flowers, blooming sweet scent, embraced her neck. She gasped on her inhale, "I'll bring you home," and without thinking pressed her lips to the shadow, to the cold hardwood. Hidden lips, shuddering breath. Curled knuckles pressed into her spine, such a small, surprised human reaction. She pulled away with his face still in her hands, kissing again, and again: "You're still human," she breathed between embraces. "You just – forgot –"

Her hand was, again, on the wooden ridge beneath his chin. She didn't hesitate this time, didn't let him shirk away: she took it firm and pulled out, upward, and the wooden mask with burning blue eyes lifted. She threw the enormous shadow back over his head, and it fell away like a mantle, and in its place –

They sat rumpled, entangled, her kneeling between his legs, him with his arms around her back, fingers clutching and wide-spaced. Moonlight made him so pale. Wirt's eyes were wide and brown, and she choked on a sob.

But for the antlers that still ringed his ears, and the black that ran under the skin of his neck and jaw, he really looked no different.

The moment hung suspended in the air until his eyes wandered and he pulled his hand from her back to turn it over in the light, moving so slowly that it seemed he was worried about being whisked away by the breeze. He looked at his fingers and then back at her, and his face creased as he whispered, "B-Beatrice –"

She should have let him speak, if just to bask in a voice she might never have heard again. Instead she consumed it, selfish, unthinking, his mouth on hers again and her palms against his chest, exactly as warm and yielding as it should be. He kissed back without reserve, put his hands in her hair and held her close.

"Wirt," she whimpered, and he responded again with _"Beatrice,"_ one word with a hundred layered underneath it. Her face was in his neck. His hands slid up her sides, and she recalled with brilliant and immediate certainty that she'd dreamed of this once, the two of them alone together, actions realized before they could ever have been possible. There was a pattern to it, the mundane and magical that cycled through their lives. Brown eyes and blue wings. Hand-holding, and being held in hand. Everything was different now, and nothing had changed at all.

She captured his jaw in her palm, to still him so she could stare past the ink-trails in his skin to the boy underneath. When she found him, she put a kiss on his forehead, firm and resolute, and he pushed his forehead down against her collarbone, to rest, and to breathe. An antler's prong scraped her shoulder.

Her mouth was on the crown of his head. "You came back," she whispered, and he squeezed his eyes shut.

" _No,"_ he said weakly, warm breath against her skin, but she hardly heard it. What did words matter when all things said otherwise? She was vindicated, and he had come back to her, and nothing could tear that truth away. At least not while the moonlight could touch them.

They slept together that night, but when Beatrice woke in the dewy morning she found herself alone in a bed of ferns, several yards outside of the campfire circle between the redwoods. Her bones were sore and her throat still hurt, but she was dry and warm beneath an old blue wool cloak buttoned securely around her shoulders up to the neck.

Birds sang, and the mist before dawn was thick and cool. It was going to be another beautiful day. She could feel it.

* * *

 **So. Mis amigos. Neighbors. Friends, Romans, countrymen - lend me your ears? There's something I've been meaning to talk to you about.**

 **I have some stuff going on lately. The story behind it all is boring and self-indulgent, but the short version is that I am really excited about a project that I've been developing for the last year or so and think I'm finally ready, in terms of both time and ability, to start work on it in earnest. What I've found, however, is that the weight of this fic as an ongoing obligation has made it very difficult for me to focus on anything new. Apparently, I am incapable of splitting my attention between two stories at the same time! It's easy enough to say that this is just fanfiction and real life has to take priority, because it does, but I really don't want to abandon this fic, and certainly not so close to the end. I have loved and lost many a fanfic to incomplete status over the years, and it sucks.**

 **So here's the deal. I this story is not being abandoned, but I can't justify making it a priority any longer, either. Expect to see updates much less often as I work around my other stuff. I know that a slow-updating fic can be hard to follow as you start to forget what happened in the previous chapter and otherwise lose interest, though, and my intention is not to keep dragging people back into this fandom long after it's otherwise dead and withered, so I will be leaving a link at the bottom of this author's note which leads to a private post on my blog, containing a summary of the content of the remainder of this story as I currently have it planned. Not as satisfying as reading the real thing, but if you are not interested in trying to follow this fic over the next god-knows-how-long and still want to know how it ends, there you are.**

 **To all others, you're a hell of an audience to have made it this far. This story is already about three times as long as I ever intended it to be and running up against the length of some of the longer Harry Potter books. I have a big ol' spiel prepared for when I finally finish, about how much I've learned and what an important project this was for me, but I'll save that for when I've earned it. In the meantime, keep being your great selves, and I'll see you on the other side. However long that takes. (And if you're interested in following my new project, I'd love to talk to you about it at whiggitymacabee. tumblr. com!)**

 **tinyurl dot com /y82rhc7m**


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